


Star Wars - Episode IX: Whisper of the Empire

by stuvren



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Gen, Spoilers, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:07:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 22
Words: 60,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21906472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuvren/pseuds/stuvren
Summary: The Resistance scrambles to find a foothold in their fight against the First Order, as the First Order borders on victory. Kylo Ren begins to hear a mysterious voice promising great power. Rey, Finn, Poe, and Rose desperately seek the hidden First Order base, to launch one last strike that may cripple the First Order and turn the tides of war in their favour...(Rewriting Episode IX because I wasn't happy with it and to exist without self indulgence is barely to exist at all)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to Kirmon64, who said a nice thing to me and inspired me to write more fic stuff!

_A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...._

**STAR WARS**

**_Episode IX_ **

****

**_Whisper of the Empire_ **

****

The diabolical FIRST ORDER runs rampant across the galaxy! After their narrow escape during the Battle of Crait, the RESISTANCE hide on an unmarked forest world, desperately evading the relentless assault of General Hux’s fleet.

Harried, vulnerable, and alone, the Resistance mourns. GENERAL LEIA ORGANA was struck down in an ambush, as she sought allies across the galaxy to bolster her rebellion’s numbers. Without their General, the future of the Resistance is dire.

SUPREME LEADER Kylo Ren seeks to eliminate the Resistance and cement his position as ruler of the galaxy. He now strikes at an outpost on the planet Kajimi, where the location of the Resistance’s final hiding place may be found. But as Kylo Ren fights, he struggles with a new challenge: a mysterious voice from the past....


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo Ren leads an assault on a Resistance communications tower, and is challenged by a mysterious voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm trying to get into the habit of writing pretty consistently, so these might be a little rough so i don't spend 600 years editing and actual publish some stuff. 
> 
> spoilers for episode IX, and i'd probably recommend seeing it before reading this because it definitely exists as a response to it (though hopefully it stands on its own as well, i mean who knows, writing is wild)

It always rained on Kajimi; sometimes a drizzle that made the streets shimmer almost mystically, sometimes a vicious downpour that made the streets near invisible. Today, the rain beat down hard on the little village made of stone. Windows and doors were shut tight. Civilians huddled indoors around flickering fires, from which the smoke drifted up from angular chimneys up into the grey clouds above. In the street, the Kajimi militia shrank behind their barricades. They blended in with the stone in grey-black armour, the only light shining from green visors in the middle of their wide, round helmets.

The, it began. Red lasers flew from behind the barricades towards the inexorable march of vicious First Order stormtroopers. Many more green lasers flew back, shredding barricades and militia soldiers alike, forcing the Kajimi defenders to retreat from street to street. 

Raindrops hissed as they fell on the lightsaber of Kylo Ren. He had just plunged it clean through the chest of a militia solder. To his right, another soldier fired a blaster bolt at his head. He raised a hand, and stopped the bolt in mid-air, before redirecting it back into the chest of the soldier. To his left, a militia soldier rushed at him with a thin, black sword. Ren parried the soldier’s blow upwards, brought an elbow back into the soldier’s head, then brought his saber down across their chest. The paved stone street around him was covered in the bodies of Kajimi militia. First Order stormtroopers surged forward behind Ren, cutting down the militia numbers with ruthless efficiency. The Kajimi militia were valiant and brave, desperate to defend their home. They were no match for the might of the First Order.

Kylo Ren wore no helmet now. His helmet had been destroyed. It had held him back. Kylo Ren would no longer be a timid copy of Darth Vader. He would forge his own path, a great red scar across the galaxy. The Resistance defied him, and would be destroyed. The girl defied him, and would be destroyed. Everyone else who had challenged him was gone. The universe was his to control. Soon, there would be no question that he was the most powerful being in the galaxy.

The Kajimi militia were defending a building in the centre of town. A circular tower, two stories tall, made of the same slate grey stone and topped with an elaborate communications tower. The tower’s radars were currently spinning madly, covered in blinking lights, desperately firing signals out into the clouds.

In front of the tower was a militia soldier, dressed in slightly more ornate armour than the rest of the Kajimi defenders. Their grey-black armour was trimmed with gold, and in their hand was a golden variant of the Kajimi sword. Kylo stepped up, and swung his saber down in a mighty overhead strike. The soldier deflected it, and slide gracefully around to their left. Once again, Ren swung, this time at the soldier’s ribs, and once again his attack was deflected. He thrust he saber forward, and the soldier knocked Kylo’s saber down, the blade glancing against the stone pavement and sending up a shower of sparks.

Kylo Ren had never been patient. In combat, he found three bold, aggressive strikes to throw the opponent off guard was usually much faster than defending himself and probing his opponent for a weakness. Generally, he was right. Few in the galaxy lasted more than three strikes. But here was this irrelevant militia soldier, not even part of a real army, on some irrelevant backwater, standing uninjured. Kylo felt the anger bubble up within him.

Now the soldier stepped forward, directing their blade towards the sword-arm of Ren. It was a poised, balletic jab, unexpectedly quick. Ren ducked back, but the blade found its mark, and dark red blood dripped down the new wound on Ren’s bicep. The Kajimi soldier stepped back, and raised their sword in a defensive stance.

Kylo Ren roared. The anger bubbled over. He raised his hand to the soldier with his palm open, then slammed it closed in a fist. The soldier’s wide helmet crumpled. They dropped their sword, bringing their hands to their head in a panic. Ren’s fist remained closed, and the helmet continued to crumple in on the soldier’s skull. The soldier dropped to their knees, a muffled yell emanating from inside the helmet. With a sickening _crunch_ , the soldier’s hands fell from their head, and they fell to the ground. Their once-round helmet was now a compact, dented ball of steel. Ren deactivated his lightsaber. Around him, First Order troops cleaned up the remainder of the Kajimi defenders. Kylo turned to the door of the tower, ripped it open with the Force, and stepped inside.

On entry, Ren heard the sound of a blaster. He raised his hand again, and caught the bolt in the air, just before it reached his face. His cold eyes turned, surveying the room. It was a dump. A mess of scrap metal, broken down droids, semi-functional consoles, and loose wiring. Thick cables hung from the roof, sparking with electricity. Beside his head, the bolt continued to hum with violent potential energy. He identified the shooter. Hidden behind a crate, her blaster aimed over the top, was Maz Kanata. She was defiant.

“I suppose I should have expected you, Kylo Ren. I didn’t think you’d be smart enough to find me,” she said, stepping out from behind the crate. The blaster bolt still hung in the air, centimetres from Ren’s raised palm. Maz lowered her blaster.

“We know you’re communicating with the Resistance. Where are they?” responded Ren.

“Do you really think I’d tell you?”

“No.”

Ren flicked his wrist, and redirected the blaster bolt into Maz Kanata’s chest. She flew into the back wall, and slid to the floor. Ren realised she had been standing in front of a functioning console, one transmitting a signal. At the centre of the terminal, a series of blue lights indicated that the transmission was 75% complete. Maz’s breath was shallow, but she continued to glare at Kylo Ren.

“We know about your base. On Mustafar. Darth Vader’s old castle,” said Maz.

“It won’t matter. You’ve already lost,” said Ren. The sounds of combat outside had quietened. Through the ruined door entered General Hux and BB-9E, flanked by a pair of stormtroopers.

“Supreme Leader Ren,” said Hux. The words were dirt in his mouth. He over-enunciated each syllable, as though he’d practiced saying it in a mirror to ensure he’d be able to say it at all. “The Kajimi defenders are defeated. What would you have done with them?”

“Eliminate them.”

Kylo pointed at BB-9E, and then over at the console. The droid rolled up to the blinking, beeping console, and hacked into it. BB-9E maintained complete silence, apart from the soft whirring sounds of the rotating console terminal.

“The droid will find the Resistance base. Prepare the fleet for take-off. We attack at once,” said Kylo Ren.

“Supreme Leader… The Resistance is already defeated. We need to consolidate our efforts claiming the rest of the galaxy. There are still core worlds that challenge our rule…” said General Hux.

Kylo Ren turned to glare at Hux. His hand twitched upward slightly at his hip, and Hux fell back against the doorframe. He tried to conceal his complete panic. Kylo Ren had used his strange powers on Hux before, and Hux was not keen for a repeat.

“The Resistance will be destroyed. The Jedi girl will be eliminated,” growled Ren. General Hux was a necessary evil, a talented commander whose aspirations could be kept in line by the threat of Kylo Ren’s anger. Kept in line until he was no longer necessary.

“Y… yes sir…” mumbled Hux, awkwardly standing back to his full height and dusting off his jacket.

Maz Kanata laughed behind them. “So desperate to erase your mistakes. It will be your undoing, Ben Solo,” she said. As she said his name, her voice dripped with contempt. Mockery. Kylo turned in a rage and raised his hand. Maz began to choke, her hands rising to her throat, trying to clear a blockage that could not be cleared.

The console beside her powered down. BB-9E rolled up to Kylo Ren, and beeped out a report. The droid’s voice was monotonous, and solemn. Ren dropped his raised fist back to his side, and turned to Hux.

“Take the droid. It has the co-ordinates,” said Kylo Ren.

General Hux provided the barest semblance of a frown. “Yes… Supreme Leader…” he drawled, before spinning on his heel and leaving the tower with BB-9E and his stormtrooper escort. Kylo glanced, one last time, at Maz Kanata, who was slumped and silent against the tower wall. He stormed out after General Hux.

The rain poured on the little village on Kajimi. Inside, machines fizzed and wiring sparked. Maz Kanata was dead.

Behind a pile of old Separatist droids, there was a noise. A whirring. Out rolled a little droid, with a conical head and a frame attached to a single wheel. The droid rolled up to Maz Kanata, and poked her with his head.

“Maz?” said the little droid. She did not respond.

The droid bowed its head.

“I miss you,” said the droid. Outside, the rain beat down on Kajimi. Above the village, the ominous First Order capital ship’s engines fired up. Sheets of rainwater fell from its gargantuan black metal frame. A troop carrier, containing Kylo Ren and General Hux, slipped in to one of its glowing blue dock stations. The capital ship rose into the sky, and zipped off into hyperspace.

\---

Kylo Ren stared out the window at the blue streamers of hyperspace light. He was in his personal quarters, a bright white space with Darth Vader’s deformed helmet on a pedestal at its centre. The helmet, once a source of pride and aspiration, was now a burgeoning problem. A threat to his focus on destroying the Resistance. When Kylo Ren was alone, the helmet now spoke to him.

“The First Order is insignificant. You are afraid of true power…” said the voice. Ren knew it would speak the second he entered the room. He could not yet bring himself to destroy the helmet.

“You are a trick. A distraction. I will kill the girl, destroy the Resistance, and have all the power I need,” responded Ren.

“Heh. You are still weak, Kylo Ren. You know this to be true. Perhaps I should ask the girl…”

“In a matter of hours, she will be dead. The Resistance will be dead. Leia is dead. Skywalker is dead. My father is dead. There is nothing holding me back now. The future is the First Order. The future is _me,_ ” hissed Kylo, turning to face the mask. It sat there unchanged. Inert. And yet he still heard the voice.

“What future, Kylo Ren? You flee from your past to your own destruction.”

Kylo’s face trembled momentarily. “You’re lying. The past is gone. Dead. I _am_ power now. What power can a ruined mask from a dead Empire offer me?”

“Not the mask, Kylo Ren. What the mask means. Legacy. The past reaches into the future. Your First Order stands on the foundations of the Empire before it. A weak imitation. Without my help, you will be forgotten.” At this, Vader’s mask shakes, ever so slightly. Ren wonders if he imagined it, for the briefest moment. He growls, and turns back to the window.

The core worlds still defy him. Pockets of rebellion appear in every system under First Order control, independent of the Resistance. The Empire’s control was absolute, undone by his grandfather’s weakest moment. Whole planets still defied his First Order, no matter how vicious Kylo Ren’s troops, no matter how terrible his rage as he quelled their defiance. Kylo Ren could not argue that he was anywhere near as powerful as Vader and the Empire had been. Not yet.

“For this power… For legacy… What would you have me do?”


	3. Chapter 3

A messy collection of buildings, made from scrap metal and blaster-burned ship-scrap, rested in a clearing on a forested, backwater planet. These impromptu shacks housed a few dozen bedraggled Resistance fighters; what was left of the Resistance after the Battle of Crait. This was a secret place on a secret planet, unnamed and unmarked, known to few. General Leia Organa had hoped this would be enough. The Resistance, though weakened, had survived.

Around the clearing rose great, rocky cliffs, covered in massive, trees with black bark and thousands of dark green, needle-like leaves. The forest floor was dotted with broad-leafed shrubs and strange, stocky mushrooms. Racing around the trees, dashing through shrubs and hopping over mushrooms, was Finn. His brow was knitted in concentration, and he sprinted through the forest with Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber ignited. Behind him, three floating orbs chased, firing bolts of red energy at him that burned black spots onto the forest floor. Finn ducked and wove, constantly looking over his shoulder to dodge blaster fire, waiting for a chance to strike.

His first opportunity soon came. Up ahead, a fallen tree crossed his path. He could see one of the droids over his right shoulder, a little closer than usual. He leapt up onto the fallen trunk, and then flung himself up off of it, turning in mid-air to cut the droid in half with his saber. The blade cut straight through, and the two halves of the droid fell with a thud to the ground. Finn smiled, but the other two droids kept advancing.

Finn realised the one in front of him was telegraphing its movements, bobbing only slightly left and right. He ducked out of the way of a few bolts from the two droids, and then raised his saber up at the one in front of him. It fired again, the bolt of energy heading directly for Finn’s face. But Finn deftly moved the saber, deflecting the bolt straight back into the droid, blasting a clean hole through its exterior shell. It too fell with a thud.

Finn turned to the last droid, which had stopped firing momentarily. He rushed at it, and the droid flew in the other direction. Finn gave chase, barely evading a head-height branch in the process. The droid was quick, and had the advantage of flying, but it had failed to contend with Finn’s unorthodox attack style. It flew in a straight line, directly ahead of Finn. Finn rotated the lightsaber in his hand, holding it like a spear, and tossed it in an arc directly to where the droid was flying. It landed true. The droid exploded into a thousand charred pieces. The saber fell to the forest floor, dis-igniting with a hiss. Finn kept grinning. He was very proud of himself.

Until he felt his feet get swept from under him. Finn gasped with shock, and flopped back down onto his back, the wind knocked out of his chest. He groaned, and opened his eyes. Above him was Rey. She was smiling, and resting against her staff.

“What kind of Jedi throws his lightsaber away?” said Rey.

“One who had a plan!” responded Finn, pushing himself up onto an elbow.

“Didn’t plan for a surprise attack.”

“I was having enough trouble planning for the regular attacks.”

Rey laughed, and offered Finn her hand. He took it, and pulled himself back to his feet.

“Not bad though, right?” asked Finn.

“Not bad. We’ll have to try with a blindfold next.”

“I never understood why you Jedi love training without being able to see so much. Did Jedi do most of their fighting in the dark?”

“It’s to practice using the Force.”

“Dunno why we can’t practice using the Force _and_ our eyes though.”

Rey laughed, and raised her hand in the direction of Luke’s lightsaber. Finn felt the nature of the world change around him momentarily, as the Force flowed from Rey to the saber and back, and the weapon leapt through the air into her hand. It had taken time, but he was beginning to see the Force in everything.

Rey began walking back through the forest.

“Come on, we should head back. Poe said BB-8 has some intel for us,” called Rey over her shoulder. Finn followed, jogging to catch up with her.

\---

Back at the clearing, Resistance fighters milled around the main section of the camp. They refuelled and repaired damaged ships. Some war-worn Resistance X-Wings and Y-Wings, but cargo ships and passenger transports retrofitted with weaponry as well.

The Resistance had taken on a new form. No longer as well armed or well trained, many of the new troops simply came from places where the First Order had forced them out. A group of Wookies sat around a LAAT gunship, members of a rebellion on Kashyyk that had been ongoing since the Clone Wars. Beside them, a Jawa argued with R2-D2 about an old Jedi starfighter, now half-brown after repairs with scrap metal plates from a Jawa sandcrawler. Further off, in a clearing, was a pair of TIE fighters, covered in colourful graffiti decrying the First Order. Their pilots shared a mug of a bright orange beverage: deprogrammed stormtroopers, both wearing First Order pilot armour with the identifying markers scratched off and graffiti painted on instead.

Dozens of people, from dozens of planets, who each had their own reasons for responding to the boot of a stormtrooper with a defiant blaster bolt. Things were messy, but they were improving.

But that was before. Before things got even worse. On a rocky outcrop above the Resistance base, General Leia Organa lay on a white marble plinth. She wore the clothes of her command: grey shirt and pants with brown accents, a brown belt dotted with pockets for medical gels and explosives, her hair pulled back into a neat bun. Across her torso rested a white satin sash, a memento of her days as Princess of Alderaan. She had died a week earlier.

Beside her sat Poe Dameron. He was hunched over, his frame much smaller than usual. His eyes were red from crying. He held his head in his hands. Beside him, BB-8 rested his head on Poe’s knee.

It had been a routine mission. Head for a safehouse on a First Order planet, eliminate stormtrooper defences, pickup the new members of the Resistance, and bring them home. It had been Poe’s job. But at the last minute, Leia had told him she’d be taking over. He didn’t question it at the time. But the transport came back damaged. Out came a stretcher, and Leia on it. Medical tried their best, but she was gone before the transport even touched down.

Poe demanded a debrief. Apparently, there were more First Order troops than expected. General Leia single-handedly took on a small army of stormtroopers, while the rest of the crew helped the new recruits to safety. Leia had caught a stray blaster bolt on the way back to the transport. It was as simple, and horrible, as that.

“I just don’t know what to do, Leia…” said Poe. “I’m not ready for this.” BB-8 cooed in consolation.

He’d been named General, after Leia’s funeral. Everyone agreed it was the right choice. Except Poe. Poe felt there wasn’t a right choice left to make.

“Nobody’s ever ready, kid.” Behind Poe, from a stairway built into the wall of the outcrop, entered Lando Calrissian. Poe smiled, a little forced, but glad to have the company.

“You all seemed ready, against the Empire. How did you do it?” asked Poe.

“No idea. It seemed impossible at the time. But through everything, through loss and betrayal and insurmountable odds, we kept going. We always made the choice to keep fighting. Even when we weren’t sure how.”

Poe sighed, and looked back at Leia.

“It’s my fault she’s gone. I was supposed to go on that raid, and bring those stormtrooper defectors home. Leia wouldn’t let me.”

“She wouldn’t let you? Sounds like she knew something, if you ask me.”

“If she knew something was going to go wrong, why did she go? Why didn’t she stop it?”

“In all my time knowing these crazy old Jedi and the way they use their magic, all I know is that it never makes any sense to me. Maybe she didn’t know all of it. Maybe she just knew you shouldn’t be the one on that mission. But she left knowing that if something did go wrong, you’d be here, and she knew you’d be able to take over.”

“I don’t know if I can take over.”

“You can. You have. And hey, it’s not just you, kid. You’re not alone here. Might not be many of us, but there’s still a whole lot of fight left,” said Lando, placing his hand on Poe’s shoulder.

“I know. I know.” Poe sighed. “We should get moving. BB-8 has news.”

BB-8’s head whirred back to the top of his body. He beeped with excitement, and rolled towards the door down to the control room, followed by Lando. Poe took a step after them, and then turned to look at Leia one last time. He sighed again, and descended down the stairs.

\---

Down in the control room. BB-8 continued his enthusiastic beeping, and rolled over to Rey. She was lounging against a support strut, waiting for BB-8 to arrive, and she smiled as she saw him. Beside her, Finn looked over Chewie’s bowcaster, the pair hunched over a welding station. He pulled on a lever, and it snapped off the blaster with a crack. Chewie growled in frustration.

“Chewie, snapping is part of the fixing process,” said Finn, but Chewie snatched the weapon out of Finn’s hands. Over by the map table, as Rose navigated another console. R2-D2 let out a long, amused whistle.

“Agreed, R2,” said C3PO, standing beside him, wearing a brown-and-green scarf covered in leaves. Poe said it would make him more inconspicuous. “Finn argues with the Wookie far too much for his own health.”

“Maybe Chewie should be worried about Finn, now he can use a lightsaber,” said Rose. Chewie let out another frustrated growl.

As he rolled up, Rey noticed BB-8’s antenna was bent. She studiously straightened it out for him as he beeped at her in greeting.

“You need to take more care of BB-8,” chided Rey, looking up at Poe with a frown as he entered.

“Take _more_ care of him?! He’s _my_ best friend, and it’s not my fault he keeps rolling around in the mud when I’m not looking,” said Poe. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

“I think not rolling around in the mud with BB-8 is a mark against you.”

Poe looked over at Finn. “I don’t know how you put up with her.”

“She hasn’t broken any of your ribs yet,” Finn said with a smile.

“I hate to interrupt,” said Lando, who did not really hate to interrupt, “but I believe I was called here on very important Resistance business.”

“You’re right, Lando,” said Poe. “BB-8 received a transmission from Maz Kanata, on Kajimi. Go ahead, BB-8.”

BB-8 beeped, and booped, and whirred, and whistled. He rolled around in a small circle as he did.

“Maz Kanata discovered the location…” said C3PO, translating.

BB-8 beeped.

“Of the First Order’s…”

BB-8 booped.

“Main base…”

BB-8 whirred.

“The base at which…”

BB-8 whistled.

“Kylo Ren stores his most powerful Dark Side artefacts.”

At the mention of his name, the room went silent. Rey’s jaw was set. She had unfinished business with him, from their last encounter. Since Crait, they had not connected through the Force. Rey was glad about that. Much as Luke had counselled calm, and General Leia had advised patience, Rey felt that the best course of action would be smashing him into dust with a lightsaber the next time she saw him.

“Good,” she said.

BB-8 stopped his rolling, and finished with a beep-boop-whirr-whistle flourish.

“And that was all BB-8 received,” said C3PO

“Is Maz playing with us? That’s not enough!” said Finn.

“The signal cut out halfway. We know Maz had the information, but she couldn’t transmit it to us in full. Maz is probably still on Kajimi, and she might have a physical copy of the exact co-ordinate log,” said Poe.

“Might?” said Lando.

“Might. But it’s our best shot,” said Poe.

“Her signal just cut out? Sounds suspicious. How can we trust we’re not walking into a trap?” said Rey.

“We don’t exactly have a lot of options here,” responded Poe.

“Well, we go. We have to,” said Rose. The rest of the group nodded their agreement.

“We go now, then. We can’t afford to waste time. Finn, Rose, get the Falcon ready. Rey, if you’re not doing Jedi stuff, you can _also_ get the Falcon ready. Everybody else, gather up supplies, let everybody know we’ll only be at Kajimi for a little while, and I’ll meet you on the ship,” said Poe. The group nodded again, and dispersed.

BB-8 rolled up to Poe, and shrill-purred.

“ _She’s_ your favourite? For fixing your antenna? We’ve been friends for years and _that’s_ all it takes to be the favourite?” responded Poe, storming off out of the control room. BB-8 rolled after him, beeping joyfully at his heels.

\---

The Millennium Falcon had been hidden under a number of the large, dark-wooded trees, and covered with leaves and branches to conceal it. Despite this, it was still a dirty lump of scrap metal that hardly seemed like it could fly. Rose hustled towards it. She always wondered how Chewie managed to land in such tight spaces. Rose figured she’d have plenty of time to ask him during their trip to Kajimi.

Finn and Rey walked side by side behind her. But Rey’s steps began to slow. As she looked around, she realised she was no longer in the Resistance base. Around her, the walls had become bright-white and metallic. The interior of a ship.

“Hello, nobody,” said Kylo Ren, lounging in an angular steel chair at the end of the room. Behind him was a large window, similar to that of a TIE fighter, which opened onto the strange blue light of hyperspace.

Rey frowned, and turned to face him.

“You’ve been quiet,” she said.

“I have had more important things on my mind,” said Kylo Ren, getting to his feet. “Tell me, _Jedi,_ how painful do you think your General’s death was? How long do you think you will last without her?”

Rey felt anger flare up inside her. She definitely wanted to smash him into pieces with her lightsaber. A monster, who had killed Han, killed Leia, and then _laughed_ at their memory. Anger wasn’t enough. _Fury_ was the only response. She’d have to smash him into pieces with her bare hands.

But she remembered her training. Calm and patient. No matter what kind of monster stood in front of her. No matter what they said. Rey sat down on the floor, crossed her legs, and closed her eyes. Kylo Ren frowned at her, confused.

“You cannot avoid me,” he said. Rey wasn’t listening. She focused her attention on the Force. She focused on the dark, powerful aura emanating from Kylo Ren.

“You’re alone. Angry. Scared. You miss your father, and your mother,” said Rey, her face perfectly serene.

“Don’t play games with me! Soon, you will be destroyed. The Resistance will be crushed.”

“You want to destroy the past, but you can’t escape it. Everything you are is a hollow copy of things that came before.” Rey felt the Force spike around Kylo Ren. She felt his fury pulse outwards. Behind it all, she felt the pain and hurt that fuelled him. The angrier he got, the more she could see through him.

Kylo Ren stepped towards her, igniting his lightsaber. “I will be Supreme Leader of the galaxy! I will destroy you, and-”

“You will never be Darth Vader. You cannot live up to his legacy. The galaxy will forget you.”

Kylo Ren howled, and swung his lightsaber at Rey. In that moment, she sensed a presence, distant, but powerful. A presence that had infiltrated Kylo Ren’s mind, wrapped around his thoughts with dark tendrils, and was even now manipulating him. And she sensed Kylo Ren. Ben Solo, too, or whatever was left of him. His presence. His intentions. The fact that he was now hurtling through hyperspace, towards the Resistance base.

He knew where she was. The First Order knew where the Resistance was! Rey felt her connection to the Force waver as panic flared within her. She had to move.

Kylo Ren’s saber struck the bright white floor of his chamber. Rey had disappeared.

Rey opened her eyes, and found herself sitting in the clearing at the Resistance base, right in front of the Millenium Falcon. Finn’s hands were on her shoulders, and he was looking at her with relief as her eyes opened.

“Rey! What happened? You sat down, and… I felt like you disappeared…” said Finn. Rey leapt to her feet, and grabbed Finn by the shoulders instead.

“Finn. The First Order are coming. Right now. We need to sound an alarm, they’ll be here any second.”

“The First Order? That’s not possible. They _can’t_ know where we are. Rey-”

“Finn. Do you trust me?”

“Of course.”

“Sound the alarm.”

Finn nodded, and raced off back towards the control room. Moments later, an alarm klaxon rang across the Resistance base. Resistance fighters sprinted across the clearing, to various ships hidden amongst the trees. As the Resistance ships began to power up, and the clearing filled with shouting and the roar of engines, three loud _booms_ erupted from the sky above.

The First Order capital ship and two supporting Star Destroyers appeared in the idyllic blue sky. Their cannons howled into action: huge green lasers began to pound the earth below. A cloud of smoke and dust shrouded the clearing, as the trees around it burst into flame, turning the Resistance base into a flaming, smoking warzone.


	4. Chapter 4

General Hux stood on the bridge of the First Order capital ship. It was a tower, covered with antennae and surrounded by large, triangular windows, looking down upon silver mass of the First Order superdestroyer. Below, the planet disappeared behind a veil of smoke, pierced only by the melodic burst of cannon fire. The whole tower shook as the ship’s powerful cannons continued to demolish the Resistance base. Hux’s face twisted upwards, contorted in upon itself, in some hollow approximation of a smile.

The Resistance had been so easy to track. They had been all over the galaxy, on little rescue missions, picking up new members and desperately fending off First Order troops in order to escape. Troops whose orders were to _let_ the Resistance escape, along with spies who had been ordered to plant locators on any Resistance vessel. Most of the time, the Resistance had been clever enough to scan their ships, and remove the locators before they returned to their base.

Until they weren’t, and a ship took them all the way back to Kajimi. To Maz Kanata. And then, the location of the Resistance’s real base. Far too easy. Hux almost wished for more of a challenge.

Kylo Ren stormed up behind him. Hux’s horror-smile contorted into a scowl.

“Supreme Leader. The Resistance base has been dusted. It is unlikely there is any… resistance… remaining,” said Hux.

“Cease cannon fire. Send ground troops.”

“But, sir, this fight is already won.”

“No. I will kill the girl myself. Ground troops.” Kylo Ren glared at Hux. Hux swallowed, glancing down at Kylo Ren’s gloved fists. Kylo turned on his heel and stormed back out of the control room.

For too long, Kylo Ren had frustrated the ambitions of the First Order with his petty grudges. The Resistance could have been quelled on Crait, had he not personally wanted to defeat Luke Skywalker. Now, their imminent victory had to be halted, so that Kylo Ren could prove himself once again. Hux knew he would lead the First Order to victory, if he had the chance. If he took control, here and now, and deposed Kylo Ren…

“Cease fire!” hissed Hux. The tower stopped shaking, and the repetitive _boom-boom-boom_ emanating from below eased. His shoulders shook with fury. But he could still defeat a ragtag bunch of traitorous scum on the ground.

“Captain Phasma.”

Hux spoke, staring out the window, watching the smoke completely cover the ground below. A massive, silver stormtrooper marched up beside him. Her armour was scratched and heavily carbon-scored, the silver streaked with striped of gnarled black. Phasma’s left arm was missing, replaced with a blocky, mechanic appendage with three broad fingers.

“General,” said Phasma, in her usual monotone that now carried a robotic undertone.

“Send in the ground troops. End this quickly, Phasma. No prisoners.”

“Of course, General.”

Captain Phasma turned on her heel, and marched out of the control tower.

\---

Poe’s X-Wing rose above the suffocating smoke covering the Resistance base. A few other ships joined him: the defector TIE Fighter, the Wookie LAAT gunship, the half-sandcrawler Jedi starfighter, a pair of X-Wings, a Y-Wing with a damaged, sparking left engine, and a rusty hunk of space-junk housing Rose and Chewbacca. Maybe two thirds of the Resistance fleet.

Poe looked up at the First Order fleet. The capital ship had suddenly stopped shelling the planet. Inexplicably. Beside it were three other star destroyers, and assorted support ships. Poe gulped. The capital ship alone would have been too much for the Resistance’s current force. But if it had stopped firing, they had a chance. This was going to have to be a tactical retreat.

“Okay, team, we all know what’s coming. Anybody ready to put together a little miracle?” said Poe, his voice crackling across the commlinks in the other ships.

“Millenium Falcon, standing by,” said Rose. Chewie growled his readiness as well.

“Red One, standing by.”

“Red Two, standing by.”

The Wookies roared into the comms. The Jawa chattered some strange war-cry. Nestled behind Poe,, plugged into the heart of his X-Wing, BB-8 whistled. The rest of Red Team, the Resistance’s last flight crew, announced their readiness.

“Uh, I haven’t been given a call sign yet, but we’re also ready to break stuff,” said the defected stormtrooper in the TIE Fighter.

From ahead of them came a familiar noise. A howling, rushing sound. First Order TIE Fighters streamed out of the star destroyers, and headed directly for the motley crew hovering above the smoke.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we need to buy some time. If anyone on the ground is hearing this, please respond. Gather who you can, get a transport ready, and give us a yell. When you’re ready, we’ll punch a hole in their defences and get out of here. Until then, Red Team, let’s dance.”

Poe pushed his thrusters forward, and gunned it towards the TIE Fighters.

\---

Finn woke inside a storm. Thick tendrils of black smoke rose around him, weaving in and out amongst one another like lazy eels. He had been tossed back, hard, against the rock wall of the outcrop that housed the Resistance control room. Around him echoed shouting, screaming, the whirring of engines, the crackling of new flame, the hissing of superheated earth, the distant sound of blaster fire. He could barely hear it through the ringing in his ears, and could see nothing but the smoke through the blurriness of his eyes. Finn considered going back to sleep. The wall wasn’t _uncomfortably_ hard, after all, and he was so tired, and his head stung after the impact of…

The impact of the First Order cannons. Destroying the Resistance base. Kylo Ren, come for Rey. His eyes snapped back into focus. Rey. Where was she? She couldn’t be far, since she’d only just left him when the cannon fire started. He pushed back any thought that the cannon fire could be the reason she wasn’t around. He pushed himself up off the wall, and reached for his blaster. Gone. Flung into the smoking abyss. The blaster fire drew closer. Finn could see the light flickering on black curtains, flashes of dulled neon colour. Growing brighter, constantly. Finn needed to find Rey, to find Poe and Rose and Chewie, and get the hell out of here.

Finn pulled out his commlink, which had thankfully stayed put in a pocket on his belt.

“Rey? Poe? Rose? Anybody out there reading?” said Finn. A blaster bolt erupted into sparks on the cliff face above his head. Finn grimaced, and ducked behind a nearby boulder. He scanned the ground for his blaster, but he could barely see anything through the haze.

“Finn? Where are you?” Rey’s voice crackled through the commlink. Finn couldn’t help but break into a grin.

“I’m near the control room. Why did the First Order stop firing?”

“No idea, but they’re releasing ground troops now,” said Poe, his voice strained as he desperately evaded TIE Fighters. “Finn. Hold out until Rose can get the Falcon on the ground.”

“Too much smoke right now! We won’t be able to find you until it clears,” said Rose.

“Once she lands, all of you, get out of here,” said Poe.

“We’re not leaving without you, Poe,” said Finn.

“Then you might not be leaving at all. Get to the Falcon.” Poe’s voice was harsh, and the commlink went dead as he cut his mic.

“He’s right. You won’t be leaving,” said a voice behind Finn. A voice Finn knew well. Over the commlink, he could hear Rey calling his name. Finn cut communications. Things were going bad. He hoped Rey would head for the Falcon, if she thought he was gone. Finn rose to his feet, and turned to face Captain Phasma.

“How many times do I have to kill you?” asked Finn.

“You cannot kill me. I will rise, again and again, with the First Order.”

“Well, I guess I’ll just kill the First Order, because then I’d be able to kill you, obviously.”

Captain Phasma said nothing. She flipped a switch on her laser axe, and its blade began to buzz ominously with electric energy. Finn looked her over. Still wearing that same silver armour, without the shoulder-cape. Damaged, but not defeated. Her new left arm was powerful, not machinery built for finesse. Finn wondered if she carried the axe because it was more practical than her old staff, or because it looked cool. He wasn’t left with much time to think before she struck.

Finn leapt back, aided by the Force. He head the crunch of her axe as it hit the ground, and the hiss as the energy-blade ate into the earth. Finn had jumped back far enough that Phasma momentarily disappeared into the smog. He could only guess at her location by focusing on the sound of the axe.

Phasma continued directly after him. She swung at him again, and again, and again. He dodged backwards, to the side, tried to slip around behind her and found himself almost cut in half. As she swung, and he dodged, Finn found himself pressed up against the cliff face. Normally, he wouldn’t have let her get such a position on him. But through the smoke, he could barely see, and he must’ve gotten himself turned around. She advanced on him now, appearing from the darkness once again, energy-blade lighting up whatever chrome was left on her armour. Phasma raised the axe above her head, and swung down.

The axe stopped, in mid-air, held by an invisible force. In front of it was Finn’s outstretched hand. His palm was open, his eyes were closed, and his breathing was steady and measured. Phasma pushed down on the axe, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Ever more a traitor, FN-2187,” said Phasma.

“Every time we fight, you’re gonna lose by more. You know that, right?”

Finn pushed his hand towards Phasma. He felt the Force between them, potential energy resting latent, the invisible pulse of the universe pumping slightly quicker as Finn offered himself as a conduit for its passage.

Finn extended his arm, and Phasma was launched back into the smog. He could hear her clatter to the ground off in the distance. Around him continued the sounds of blaster fire and adrenalized shouting, but nothing from the direction of Phasma. He knew he’d picked up a few tricks pretty quickly, but he didn’t realise he was that good. He’d have to thank Rey for her excellent teaching when he met up with her. And then, with a pang in his heart, he realised that wouldn’t happen. He would need to find some way to distract the First Order for long enough to the Falcon to get away. Today would be Rey’s final memory of Finn. He hoped it was a good one. He hoped a lot of things about Rey, but… Best not to think about that now.

Captain Phasma leapt through the cloud of smoke and dust to break Finn’s reverie, and almost severed his head for good measure. Her shock-axe cleaved the air where Finn had stood milliseconds before, save for his lucky dodge off to the side. Phasma laughed behind her strange, charred mask. If her over-chrome armour had looked almost comical to Finn once, the chrome paired with the melted, warped strips appeared entirely deranged.

Finn no longer had the element of surprise. Phasma moved quickly, swinging overhead, spinning around on her heels, and bringing the axe back around in an arc. Finn ducked, and dodged, and occasionally blasted her strikes away with quick use of the Force. Phasma would have entirely bested him, had he not been trained to hear the intent of her muscles the tiniest moment before they activated, to move ever-so-slightly faster with the aid of the Force.

Instead, they were at a stalemate: Phasma striking, Finn dodging, dancing and weaving around their own personal battlefield shrouded in shadows. From a distance, one could only see the thin blue line of the shock-axe, flashing angrily in the dark.

\---

Poe didn’t think as he flew. He couldn’t. He flew on instinct, instinct quicker than any thought, feeling he needed to spin a moment before blaster fire erupted around him, knowing that the TIE Fighter on the left hand side of the battalion needed to be shot down first, in order to send it crashing into the other two. Knowing these things like one knows how to breathe.

But he flew against infinity. The TIE Fighters never stopped coming. His Resistance pilots were some of the best in the galaxy. But it didn’t matter. They had, what, a dozen ships? A dozen First Order fighters emptied out of the first port on their smallest cruiser. It didn’t matter how good they were. The math wouldn’t bare out. He heard cries as his comrades burnt up under the First Order assault.

Poe was okay with dying. General Leia died for the Resistance. Death was the inevitable end for everyone, and it came soon for anyone fighting the First Order. Poe did not fear death. He feared failure. Against the swarm of TIE Fighters, an angered hive of black spots in the sky surging towards them, he had no idea how he would clear a way for the Resistance to escape. Poe could not accept the Resistance dying.

“Hey, General?” said Rose, her voice crackling through the headset, hard to hear over the harsh noise of TIE engines. “Any idea how we’re going to punch a hole in _this?_ ”

Poe sighed. “No. None. I wasn’t asking for a miracle to be cute.”

“Uh, so, how are we gonna get transports out?”

“Rose, I really hope you know this isn’t helping.” To his left, Poe saw the strange little Jawa starfighter erupt into flames, as a TIE Interceptor racing after it pummelled it with missiles. He heard the Jawa scream, before their mic cut out in a burst of static. Poe had never had the chance to learn their name. They’d arrived a day before Leia died. He should’ve made more of an effort. He should’ve…

“Poe?” said Rose, and edge of panic in her voice.

“Hey, uhh, General?” said another voice, the defecting Stormtrooper in her colourful TIE Fighter. Poe could see her weaving through ominous, grey-black TIE Fighters, firing pinpoint blasts into their weakest areas.

“Yeah, hey, what’s your name?”

“Uh, Demi. I was an engineer, with the First Order, and uhh… Kylo Ren didn’t have the ships docked for repairs after Crait. He kept sending them across the galaxy, trying to put down little rebellions. The shields on that capital ship aren’t functioning from behind, and uhh…”

“You’re kidding,” said Poe, dumbfounded.

“No, no, I’m not. This seems like a bad time for a joke. The shields aren’t functioning from behind, and that communication’s tower above the bridge is currently the only point of comms for the whole fleet.”

“The only point? For the _whole fleet?_ And it’s mostly _undefended?_

“Kylo Ren is more confident than prudent.”

“So if we destroy it…?”

“It won’t stop them, but it will confuse them, probably enough that we can make a hole and get out of here.”

“Hey, Demi, I’m really glad you bailed on those guys.”

Demi laughed awkwardly. “Yeah, no problem General…”

Poe switched his commlink to all channels.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I can’t promise you a miracle, but I can promise you a chance. Form up behind me. We’re gonna get behind that capital ship, and destroy that comms tower.”

\---

Rey glared at her commlink. She had been holed up inside the control room, waiting for Finn to reconnect with her. Waiting for Finn to respond, so they could work on a plan to meet up and get to the Falcon. _Not_ waiting for Finn to respond, so that he could run off on some fool’s errand and “save” the day. Rey would not allow this to happen. She would find Finn herself, and drag him by the scruff of the neck back to the Falcon.

She couldn’t see through the smoke. Strangely, she couldn’t sense Finn either. Rey doubted he’d managed to get himself killed this quickly. Maybe it was all the other people around, Resistance and First Order troops, their desperate battles leaking out into the Force and muddying the waters.

Rey continued searching. Panic, and fear, and adrenaline, all over. But that was normal in a battle, and wouldn’t hide someone attuned to the Force. Unless Finn was trying to hide? But he definitely didn’t know that. Unless… he’d read something in one of Luke’s Jedi texts and hadn’t mentioned it. But why wouldn’t he?

The Force felt as though it was everywhere. It pulsed. It thrashed. It crashed against itself in waves. Discontent. Anger. The Force turned bitter… And then Rey knew. He was here. She drew the lightsaber from her belt, and ignited it.

“You were looking for me, so I came and found you.” Kylo Ren emerged from the shadows, and ignited his own saber. They were in their own tiny pocket of the battlefield; one side blue, the other red.

“Wasn’t looking for _you._ ”

“Who else? Your precious Skywalkers are dea-,” Kylo began, but was interrupted by Rey leaping into the air and slashing down at him. He parried, hurriedly, stumbling back. Her blows kept on coming. This was not like their battle at Starkiller base, where a wounded Kylo was surprised by both Finn and Rey wielding a lightsaber, where he was distracted by his life’s work crumbling around him. This was not Snoke’s throne room, where their battle was as much cooperation as it was conflict, where he held back to convince her to join him, and where she surprised him once again. This time, the surprise came from a much more horrifying place: She was beating him… because she was better than him.

Kylo Ren couldn’t comprehend it. He blocked left, and stumbled back as she swung again, quick as death, barely evading her strike to his right. There was nothing behind her eyes, no untamed fury or panic. Just calm. Deep breaths. And blow after blow that sent Kylo Ren stumbling back into smoky nothingness.

Had Luke taught her this, in such a short time? Luke was never this skilled in combat. She evoked stories of Obi-Wan Kenobi, relentless and poised. Obi-Wan had somehow bested Anakin Skywalker, the greatest Jedi in the galaxy, the future Darth Vader, after all. And now, Kylo Ren found himself dismantled by a similar foe, alone in the dark, barely staving off defeat.

Rey suddenly kicked Kylo Ren in the stomach, as he tried to block her overhead feint. He fell back, collapsing to the ground, his saber bouncing away harmlessly. Defeated. She looked down at him impassively, her saber looming.

Rey was surprised to sense Finn nearby. Kylo Ren’s influence had disappeared, and she felt him… nearby… only metres away. She looked around, and saw a flashing blue light, bobbing up and then slamming violently down through the smoke cloud, dancing between two silhouettes. Rey was puzzled. And then Finn appeared, leaping back from the other figure. Unarmed. Dripping with sweat, but seemingly unharmed as well.

The other figure appeared, chasing him. Captain Phasma, inexplicably. Finn said she’d been killed on _The Supremacy_ , burnt up with Snoke and all the rest. She certainly looked like she’d been burned. But here she was, again, swinging an axe crackling with energy at Finn.

Rey hardly thought. She pulled her saber away from Kylo Ren’s face and disignited it. She turned to Finn, and threw it, overhand. It spun in the air, looking almost frozen in the clouds of smoke. Finn dodged another vicious strike from Captain Phasma. He fell to one knee, his eyes never leaving Phasma. Rey wondered if he could sense her. She wondered if she’d thrown away their only chance of survival.

Finn stuck his hand out. The saber settled in his palm, and he ignited it, the vibrant blue reflecting in his eyes and against the chrome of Phasma’s armour. Phasma lifted her axe again, but took a step back. Finn grinned. Finn lunged.

Rey began to smile, but then grimaced as Kylo Ren’s saber blade arced up at her. Now she was on the back foot, and Kylo struck at her with the same aggression as he had when they began their battle. Kylo swung hard at Rey’s left side, and she dodged backwards, sparks from the saber fizzing against her robe. Kylo swung again, a vertical slice overhead. Rey slipped, evading the saber, but falling onto her back. Above her stood Kylo Ren, drawing his saber above his head again, his eyes blazing red with some otherworldly fury. But Rey sensed Finn’s thought a second before she sensed the object hurtling towards her. She caught Luke’s saber as Kylo swung down. She ignited it. Kylo’s strike was deflected by a vivid wall of blue light. Now, Rey smiled. Kylo scowled, and swung again.

\---

Three ships formed up together, pelting towards the nose of the First Order command ship. Poe eyed the comms tower, on top of the bridge, a small collection of wires and antennae that might just get them out of this mess. He flew at the front of the formation; to his left was the Falcon, piloted by Rey and Chewie, and to his right was Demi, in her neon TIE. The comms tower was slowly growing in size as they grew closer to it. Unfortunately, the battalion of TIE Interceptors heading their way were growing larger as well.

“Right. Rose, Demi, head in low, close to the hull, so their biggest anti-air guns can’t get a bead on us. We head straight for the tower, we clean out as many First Order clowns as we need to, and when we’re past the shields, you _both_ peel off, said Poe. “Rose, find Rey and Finn. Demi, make sure the Falcon and the other transports have cover. I’ll take out the comms tower, and meet you up in the atmosphere so we can get out of here.” BB-8 beeped nervously in Poe’s ear.

“But Poe, what if you… what if it doesn’t work?” asked Rose.

“If it doesn’t work, I’m dead. Try to get out of here anyway.”

“We’re not leaving you behind.”

“It’s not leaving me behind if I’m dead. I promise, I won’t be mad. Ghosts don’t hold grudges.”

“Isn’t that, um, exactly what ghosts are known to do? Isn’t that why they’re ghosts and not just dead?” asked Demi. Poe grimaced.

“We don’t have a lot of time, folks. I’m gonna gun it. You see those Interceptors out there? Don’t let them do any intercepting.”

Poe pushed forwards on the thrusters. He dove into the crowd of Interceptors, blasting one down to his left, rolling over its flaming carapace as it fell towards the planet’s surface, aligning himself back upright and firing at another TIE. He maintained consistent forward momentum, evading short-range blaster fire, ever conscious of the cruiser as he grew closer.

Rose and Demi weaved around him. Together, the trio carved a gateway of fire through the onrushing First Order ships. Before them was the capital ship, massive and silver, draping them in heavy blaster fire. Poe eyed a long basin in the ship’s surface: a maintenance passageway, usually used for the repair of the complex electrical systems necessary to run such a large ship. Right now, Poe saw it as a great vein, leading up to the beating heart of the First Order ship. Maintenance trenches were heavily defended, but once inside, they’d have an almost clear run to the comms tower.

“We’re gonna head straight down into that trench there, folks. Get ready to dance! Gonna be a lot of fire on us before we’re through.”

The trio burst through the cloud of TIE Interceptors, into a storm of green lasers that thrummed around them like booming blows on a great drum. The Interceptors flew by, and desperately tried to turn in pursuit. Poe, Rose, and Demi weaved in and out between one another, somehow evading fire, a testament to their learned instincts after surviving for so long.

The First Order fleet was powerful, and dangerous, but it rarely faced fair odds. A few dozen cobbled-together ships from a local militia on some quiet planet was treated to a hundred TIEs in response. Resistance was not just crushed. It was obliterated, erased from existence, even its memory a threat to Kylo Ren’s supremacy.

But when they failed with their first strike, First Order pilots didn’t know what to do. They never usually had to turn around and give chase. The cannons filled the air with destruction, but they were rarely on the defensive. They had no solution for pilots who knew how to find the gaps in their firing patterns. And so Poe, Rose, and Demi slipped past the TIE Interceptors and the First Order cannons, and began their run up the maintenance trench.

The trench was filled with smaller turrets, designed to stop droid infiltration. Not three military ships, flown by elite pilots. Poe’s X-Wing had no trouble dismissing them, and the trio raced down the runway nearly unimpeded. The comms tower grew ever closer.

“The shielding ends with the front of the bridge. A couple of missiles should disable the tower,” said Demi.

“Alright. In a few seconds, I want you both out of here,” Poe responded. Rose and Demi agreed.

They had almost reached the bridge when the roar of TIE engines sounded from behind them. Poe growled in frustration.

“How many?” said Poe.

“Just three. They wouldn’t be able to fit any more in the trench,” said Rose. Poe frowned. In their current position, there wasn’t enough room to manoeuvre and return fire. The Falcon was undermanned, and the rotating cannons were currently inactive. The Interceptors were surely lining up their missiles as Poe thought.

“I have an idea. Rose, come up on my left wing. On my mark, give me a nudge.”

“Poe, that’s going to send you spinning into a wall.”

“Well, I’m hoping it’ll send me spinning somewhere at least. Trust me.” Rose groaned, but Poe sensed acceptance.

“BB-8, are the TIEs aligned horizontally?” BB-8 chirped that they were. “Alright, get us on the same axis at they are. Rose, T-minus 5 seconds.”

Poe’s X-Wing lined up with the TIE Fighters as Poe counted 5. He checked his thrusters at 4. BB-8 purred nervously at 3. Poe rested his finger on the joystick trigger at 2. At 1, he could see Rose lean the Falcon over in his direction.

“Now.”

Poe maxed out the thrusters on his left side as the Falcon nudged the left wing forward. He began to spin. More accurately, he began to violently hurtle to his right, horizontally. Poe laughed as he pulled the trigger, blaster fire erupting from the X-Wing. The three TIE Interceptors behind him were lined up exactly across from him. They erupted into sparks and flame as they met with his 180 degree arc of blaster fire. He heard Rose and Demi cheering through comms.

Poe hadn’t exactly thought about how he would stop. The X-Wing spun on its axis once, and then came around again. On the third rotation, Poe maxed out the right-hand thrusters. _Might as well work, right?_ he figured.

It did. Poe re-joined the Falcon and the TIE Fighter in front of him, having only slightly lost momentum.

“I have no idea how you did that,” said Demi.

“Years of practice, kid!” said Poe, more confidently than he felt about his little trick. The crew had just passed the bridge, and was coming up on the end of the trench.

“Alright. Rose, get Finn, get Rey. Demi, make sure they get out.”

“Poe, you know you’re coming with us, right?”

“I know. We’ve all got work to do. I’ll see you out there!”

The three ships rose up out of the trench. The Falcon peeled left, and the TIE right. Poe continued to rise up, turning around to face the comms tower. TIE Fighters lurked nearby. But Poe had a clear run to the tower. He pulled down the visor from above him, and looked through it to align the missiles. It was an easy move. Communications towers don’t move around a whole lot.

Poe pulled the trigger. Missiles raced from the X-Wing with a hiss. A moment later, the comms tower erupted in bold, golden light. What was left was a smoking nub on top of the cruiser’s bridge. Poe grinned. Ahead of him was a roiling ocean of First Order ships, hassling what was left of the Resistance, about to descend into chaos. He gunned it towards them.

\---

Finn and Rey danced around the stumbling Kylo and Phasma. The saber flew between them, alternately lacing scorch marks across chrome armour and burnt gashes across pale skin. The smoke was beginning to clear. Around them, the Resistance continued to retreat, continued to hold ground until troop carriers could collect them and ferry them away. Much as watching Kylo falter and fumble under the weight of her blows was terribly enjoyable, Rey knew they needed to end this. Soon.

Kylo Ren had lost something, within himself. He had come down to the planet’s surface confident, desperate to kill the girl himself and become, inarguably, the most powerful being in the galaxy. The voice in his head, the ancient power that offered itself to him, would be proven wrong. Kylo Ren was _true_ power. Or so he thought.

Now there were two of them, two Jedi, confidently battering him deeper and deeper into submission. Hux’s half-killed Captain lackey provided him absolutely nothing but further humiliation. Kylo… needed to flee. He needed to be away from this place.

His moment shortly came. From above them came the roar of engines, and the smoke began to clear around them as the Millenium Falcon hovered into view. A ramp descended from its belly. Chewbacca stood at the foot of it, one hand holding onto a support strut, his other aiming his bowcaster at Kylo Ren. He began blasting the second he saw Kylo’s face. Kylo had been lunging after an unarmed Rey, again just barely missing her, again being only seconds from victory when the lightsaber would appear in her hand and the tides would turn. As blaster fire began to rain down around Kylo, Rey stopped. She glared at him, for a moment. Then she turned, tossed the saber to Finn, and sprinted to the Falcon. Kylo could do little more evade.

Beside them, Captain Phasma swung at Finn. Slow. She was tired. So was Finn, but the Force would not leave him like his energy had. Her axe blows fell weaker, and slower, each time.

Her blow came from high. Finn sensed her movement, and swung his saber back at her. A long, low, horizontal sweep. It caught Phasma in the hip, and cut straight across her body, from right to left. The axe tumbled from her hand. Momentum tossed her to the ground, her torso separated from her lower body. Finn could hear her screams erupting from behind her mask; a haunting, echoing sound.

Chewbacca stopped firing, and roared at Finn, demanding he get in the Falcon. For a moment, Finn paused. He looked across at Kylo. Beaten and bruised, his eyes crazed, his saber hanging limply in his right hand. Kylo disengaged the saber. He stumbled back. He turned. He ran.

Finn watched, thinking for a moment to chase him. But then Finn turned, too, and raced towards the Falcon. He leapt onto the ramp as the Falcon rose into the air. Above the haze of smoke, the First Order star destroyers hung static and confused above the planet. The Falcon was joined by a few other ships as it rose through the atmosphere, some fighters and (thankfully) some transports. A gaudy, painted TIE Fighter jetted off ahead of the Falcon, cutting through a troop of other TIEs flitting around in the sky like drunken flies. Rose smiled. Ahead of them, she could see stars.

The planet fell away below them, most First Order ships returning to their cruisers, a few chasing the Resistance fleet and getting shot down. Rose bit her lip. She still couldn’t see Poe.

Finn raced into the Falcon’s control room.

“Where’s Poe?” he asked.

“I’m… Not sure. He destroyed their communications, and then…” Rose was interrupted by Finn grabbing the commlink.

“Poe Dameron. If you’re not up here in the next _five seconds_ , I will turn this thing around and come and find you.”

Silence. And then laughter, bathed in static, erupted inside the cockpit.

“Hey now, I’m coming. No need to be so dramatic about it,” said Poe. Rose looked out of the cockpit again, and saw a smoking, busted-up X-Wing racing towards them.

“Everybody, we’re gonna jump somewhere quiet. Sending co-ordinates now. Let’s move before they remember we exist.”

Chewie entered the co-ordinates into the Falcon. Rose reached towards the ship’s hyperspace lever, and pushed it forwards. The planet disappeared behind them. The Resistance fleet escaped, wrapped in a blanket of blurred stars.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: body horror (just a lil)

The Resistance base still smouldered, but much of the smoke had cleared. Below, the forest was barren, black and brown, dented with hundreds of impacts from First Order cannons. Above, the First Order command ship hovered. _The Supremacy_ was surrounded by its support cruisers, the TIE Fighters having returned to their bays. Occasionally, a small fighter would travel from one cruiser to another. Otherwise, the air was silent.

Droids buzzed around the bridge, fusing in new antennae and stringing new wiring throughout where the old communications tower once stood. The repairs would only take a day, and then the First Order fleet would be back amongst the stars, rampaging for galactic dominance.

Inside the ship, a lightsaber flared inside a white room. It gashed the walls, straight through the plating, revealing the wiring and support struts behind it. The room was now streaked with sparking black lines, growing more numerous by the second as Kylo Ren took out his anger. He swung, and swung, and swung, tearing the room into pieces. At the end of the room, Darth Vader’s melted mask sat in front of a large window. It watched in silence as Kylo howled.

Eventually, Kylo slumped to his knees. His lightsaber deactivated, and he tossed it to his side. He was breathing heavily. The Force stormed around him.

Defeated. By the girl. _Again._ And this time, she would have won. If he hadn’t fled. If she hadn’t chosen not to pursue him. She had _broken_ him. The voice was right. He wasn’t powerful enough. He would never be powerful enough.

“The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to powers many cannot understand until they hold it, Kylo Ren,” hissed the voice. Kylo clenched his teeth, but he found himself listening. “You sought to _kill the past_. I heard your little speech. And I watched as she spurned you. The apprentice, turning on the master. You did not abandon the past, Kylo Ren. You relived it.”

“Then why should I listen to you? Why do you offer me the past if it only offers me failure?” said Kylo.

“Failure? The Empire controlled the whole galaxy. It lives on in the past. The strongest version of the Dark Side, in the past. It’s greatest avatars: Maul, Tyranus… Vader. All in the past. Failure is your present, Kylo Ren. Return to the past, and you will find success.”

Kylo felt his failure like an open wound. Again and again, he had failed. Traitorous stormtroopers and escaped prisoners returned to vex him. His mother and father, who only ever sought to hold him back, killed, and yet he continued to fail. The Millenium Falcon, a ship so ancient it should barely run, instead returned again and again to dismantle empires. And the girl… A Jedi. The ancient enemy.

Kylo Ren had always sought to become Darth Vader. To become _better_ than Darth Vader, to build an Empire greater than his, unassailable and unquestionable. Yet he had tried to forge his own path, and failed every time.

“You know why the Empire failed. Darth Vader, in a moment of weakness, turned to his memory. He remembered the Jedi. He remembered his wife. He remembered, and he failed. But what he remembered was weakness. He did not remember how the Jedi had spurned him. How his master sought to kill him. How he had grown the greatest Empire in the galaxy. Had he remembered what I remember, he would have lived. The Empire would have lived. You hold both of these memories within you, Kylo Ren. Those of weakness, and those of Empire.” The voice hissed in Kylo’s head, occupying his whole mind. He could hardly think of anything else. As it spoke, he felt the pain from his physical wounds soften. His despair roiled within him, and began to reshape as anger.

Kylo rose to his feet, and turned to the mask. It sat there, inert. Yet Kylo felt some power emanating from it.

“Why did you tell me to kill the girl?” asked Kylo.

“Like her master, Luke Skywalker, she was a threat to you. Not just to your body, but to your mind. She needed to be eliminated. But she has grown too powerful. Our plan has changed.”

“ _Our_ plan?”

“Our plan to make you strong, Kylo Ren. You need my help. My power. Together, we can rebuild the Empire. Together, we can revive what is near lost.”

Kylo stormed up to the mask. “Who are you? Snoke? Vader? How can I trust you?”

“My precious boy… Snoke only acted on whispers I placed in his mind. Whispers I placed, so I could get to you. Vader worked as my right hand, but still I whispered, and he followed. I am much more than Snoke and Vader.” Kylo stepped back, realising to whom he was speaking. Darth Sidious. The Emperor.

“You should trust me because I am your last hope. Answer a simple question, and I offer you the grandest Empire in history. More power than Darth Vader. The death of all resistance. Legacy, Kylo Ren. All I ask: do you truly wish to restore glory to the galaxy?”

Kylo fell to his knees in front of the podium. As he gazed on the mask, he saw it shifting in front of him. First, the mask as he knew it; melted, and ruined. Then, the mask as he knew it had been; shining, horrifying, whole. Kylo Ren bowed his head.

“I do.”

\---

“Have you seen Finn?” asked Rose. Rey sat cross-legged in the common area of the Falcon, meditating. They had a chance to defeat Kylo Ren, for good. They had chosen not to take it. Rey knew he’d be back, knew he would continue to commit evil across the galaxy. Had Finn and Rey’s survival cost many more people their lives?

Rey furrowed her brow. She _would_ stop Kylo, eventually. And she had no intention of sacrificing anyone to do so. She opened her eyes, and looked at Rose. Rose looked tired. Battle-weary.

“No, but he’s down the hall, trying to repair C-3PO,” said Rey. Threepio had been hit with a stray blaster bolt during the battle. Much as he complained, he was mostly fine. Finn was giving him a touch-up. She could feel his hands, welding together some plating on C-3PO’s chest. The brightness of the sparks from the welding torch danced in her vision.

“I haven’t seen him for hours! Did he tell you how long he’d be? I need him to talk to Poe…” Poe was sitting in the cockpit, draped over a chair. Occasionally, he looked out the Falcon’s front window. The remainder of the Resistance floated in the void; a few cramped transports, and a few smoking fighters. He’d docked his X-Wing up on the Falcon, to try and repair it. R2 was outside now, magnetised to the hull of the X-Wing, trying to reconfigure the wiring on one of its blaster-burned wings. The Resistance was finished. The First Order had won. All Poe had managed was to delay the inevitable.

“No, he…” Suddenly, something clicked for Rey. She leapt to her feet, darted past Rose, and sprinted for the workshop. Rey sprinted into the room, and almost crashed into Finn as he worked on C-3PO. He was leaning over Threepio, who was seated on a workbench. He’d almost finished welding Threepio’s chest plate back together. Beside him was a little tin of shiny gold paint, and some wax to buff with. Finn knew Threepio prided himself on his shiny exosekelton. He figured that the Resistance could take all the morale they could get, at the moment, even if it was all appearances.

“Finn! I can feel your heartbeat!” she said. Rey almost hadn’t realised it. She felt her heart beat, and between each thud, was another. Finn’s. She could see through his eyes, and feel through his hands. It was so natural, it almost went unnoticed.

“Yeah, I know. I can feel yours too,” said Finn, never looking away from his welding. He seemed disinterested by the concept.

“Can you feel my heartbeat?” asked Threepio.

“You don’t have a heartbeat,” said Finn.

“How rude. I just wanted to feel included,” said Threepio. Rey grabbed Finn by the shoulders.

“Are you not listening? _I can feel your heartbeat_.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve been able to feel yours since you started teaching me to use the Force.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t mention this.”

“Well, I’m kinda new to the whole space magic thing. I figured it was normal.”

“It’s not normal! I don’t even know how it’s possible…”

“You have the same thing with Kylo Ren, right?” Finn’s expression twisted at the thought.

“No. No! With Kylo, it’s like… we’re both in the same place, and space collapses and warps around us. With you, it’s like being in two places at once! In two bodies at once!” Rey was shaking Finn with excitement. He put his hands on her forearms, to slow her down.

“That seems… kinda cool?” Finn smiled, a little uncertain.

“Yes, it is definitely kinda cool,” responded Rey. She beamed, and pulled him close, wrapping him in a tight hug. Finn folded his arms back around her. Threepio stood up, and hugged them too.

\---

Rey had sprinted off down the hall after Finn. Rose didn’t want to interrupt, but… Somebody needed to talk to Poe. She furrowed her brow. Poe Dameron was a general, a Resistance hero, and somebody Rose looked up to. She wasn’t sure how to talk to him at the best of times. Now, he sat in a chair in the cockpit of the Falcon, staring out into space, brooding on what had happened. What could she possibly say?

But she had to say something. She turned on her heel and headed for the cockpit, and found things as she’d left them. Poe, hunched in a chair, with his eyes closed. Chewie, fixing some part of the controls up front. An expanse of distant stairs stretching out ahead of them, broken only by the occasional Resistance ship floating in the void. Poe still hadn’t given them any orders. Rose had radioed through to suggest they wait around, and get some sleep, until Poe was ready to speak. Looking at him now, Rose wasn’t sure if he ever would be.

“Hey, Poe? General? We need to work out what to do ne-,” began Rose.

“No. Nope. Stop. No, we don’t. We can’t. Please stop,” responded Poe, not opening his eyes.

“We _can’t?_ We have to! The First Order aren’t going to stop.”

“There’s nothing we can do. We survived, but we don’t have anything else to give. They won, Rose.” Rose’s jaw dropped. She tried to start a sentence several times, but no sound came out. Poe sighed. Rose’s face turned red with anger. The silence between roiled, like the ocean in a storm.

Chewie put his welding tool on the dashboard of the Falcon and stood up. He turned to face Poe, grabbed him by the collar, and lifted him into the air. Poe struggled, trying to slap Chewie’s arms away. Chewie pinned him to the side wall of the ship and roared; a long, angry roar that blew Poe’s hair back and made Rose jump back with fright. After a few seconds, Chewie stopped. He stared at Poe. Poe stared back.

“… Okay. I’ll listen to her. You didn’t have to yell,” said Poe. Chewie harrumphed, dropped Poe to the ground, and returned to his work. Poe took a deep breath, straightened his hair, and looked at Rose.

“Chewbacca has politely suggested I hear you out, so…” said Poe. Rose snickered. She took a step towards him. Poe’s expression changed, as though he’d just realised there was a second Wookie in the room.

“They have _not_ won. They have **_not._** They won’t ever have won until we’re all dead, and even then, there will always be people willing to resist them. Not everyone has the option to just _give up,_ Poe Dameron. Not everyone gets to be a fancy general, and decide when the fight is won or lost. Some people have to fight because if they don’t, the First Order will destroy everything they have.” Rose took another step towards Poe, who stepped back until he was flat against the other wall.

“I don’t care how sad you are, or how defeated you feel. You’re apparently in charge here. So buckle up, get over yourself, and make a plan. Because those people out there need a next move. _I_ need a next move. General Leia lost a thousand times, and always took the next step. I expect the same from you.” Rose was red with anger. She wasn’t yelling at Poe, but he felt her controlled, measured monotone was far worse.

“You work out what we do next, and you come to the mess hall, and you let us all know. And if I see you moping around again… Chewie and I aren’t gonna be so nice next time.” Rose glared at Poe, and then stormed out of the room. Poe let out a sigh of relief, and unclenched his fists.

\---

Half an hour later, Rose, Finn, and Rey chatted in the common room. Rose had calmed down, and C3PO was back to full functioning.

Poe entered from the hallway. He looked bashful, but had at least fixed his hair somewhat. Rose glared at him as he entered. Poe returned a nervous smile.

“Alright, team. I’ve been thinking about it, and we have a next move. We need to go and find Maz Kanata. She seemed to have co-ordinates for an important First Order base. If we find it, and take it out, it might scramble their efforts across the galaxy. Get ready to move, I’ll radio the rest of the ships.” Poe looked at Rose for approval. She didn’t stop glaring, but gave him a slight nod. He’d have to take it.

“How’d you get him out of his bad mood, Rose?” asked Finn. Poe hadn’t realised they’d all noticed him moping.

“We just had a friendly chat about… responsibility,” said Rose.

“Yeah, Rose was very helpful. Maybe she should be in charge here!” said Poe, grinning.

“Yeah,” said Finn.

“Probably,” added Rey.

Poe frowned at them both, and turned back towards the cockpit. The Falcon lit up with activity. Poe radioed across to the other ships.

“Ladies and gentlemen, sorry about the delay. We’re heading for Kajimi, and Maz Kanata. I know we’re tired, and we’ve been hit hard. But I’ve never known the Resistance not to hit back harder. Word is, Maz knows the whereabouts of a First Order base. I say we get their address, and come knocking.” The remaining Resistance ships hooted and hollered in response. Poe allowed himself a smile, and set the Falcon’s co-ordinates for Kajimi.

\---

Sparks rose up behind General Hux like the eruption of a large, electrical volcano. Otherwise, the room was dark, except for the window facing out to the stars. Hux gazed out the window, the spark erupting from behind him. He was deep within the bowels of the _The Supremacy_.

A door opened to his left, and a subordinate in a pristine First Order naval uniform entered. She looked over to the shooting sparks, and her jaw dropped in shock. She swallowed her disgust, and averted her gaze as she walked over to her General.

“You summoned me, sir?” she said. His face was shrouded in the dark room, only occasionally made visible by the shower of sparks. The sparks were paired with sounded of drilling, metal grinding on metal, metal grinding on things altogether more organic.

Most officers in the First Order liked General Hux far more than Supreme Leader Ren. He was just as unpleasant, in his own way, but he was far less likely to choke someone for making a mistake. Of course, he had his own regime of torture. General Hux seemed to know exactly where someone was vulnerable. Friends, family, goals, dreams, ambitions… Hux had a remarkable knowledge of all of these things, about every member of his crew. It seemed he only used this knowledge as punishment. Lovers he couldn’t possibly know about would be threatened. Aspirations for promotions resulted in demotions to scrubbing the engines of TIE Fighters. Any dream of leaving the First Order… There were places, locked places, hidden away on _The Supremacy,_ where officers feared to tread. The rumours about these places were enough to stop any dissent.

“I did summon you, Lieutenant Tariss.” Hux did not move. He continued to stare out the window. Tariss could see his eyes reflecting in the window. Personally, she preferred Kylo Ren. He was prone to anger, childish, and violent. But Tariss had seen Hux’s eyes. A vast, empty blue, like a frozen tundra. Calculating. Controlled. The evil Hux was capable of was far greater than that of Kylo Ren.

Hux had little on his mind as he looked out the window. Things had become very simple, after all. Kylo Ren was a volatile presence, and his command led to the repeated failure of the First Order. This was unacceptable. The galaxy was on the line, after all. It was time for General Hux to restore order.

“Yes, Lieutenant Tariss,” said Hux. “It is time. Execute Protocol One.”

Tariss’s blood ran cold. Protocol One. It couldn’t be. Only a select group of officers had even heard of it, and Hux had promised it would never be activated.

“Sir…” Tariss began.

“Silence. Comply, or be eliminated, Lieutenant.”

Tariss looked back at the sparks. An operating table, and a body beneath a horrible network of whirring saws and dripping needles. She had tried to ignore the screaming. It was muffled, hidden beneath a helmet, but not hidden enough.

“Yes, of course, General…” Hux turned his head, ever so slightly. A warning.

“Oh, I’m sorry, of course, _Supreme Leader_.” Lieutenant Tariss scurried off through the open door. It hissed closed behind her.

Now Hux turned, to face the operating table. The sparks had stopped, and the machine above it had shifted off to the side of the room. Hux looked down at the body. The screams had not abated. Hux felt that she needed to be awake for the surgery. To remind her of the consequences of failure.

Captain Phasma continued to writhe on the operating table. Her helmet remained on her head, now fused to her by a series of shining new screws around her neck. Her upper body was covered in a grim painting of scars and burns. Her right arm remained organic, her left bulky and mechanical. From the waist down, she had been replaced. _Improved, really_ , thought Hux. Two large, mechanical legs descended from her torso, inelegant but powerful. Hux had them made of chrome. He doubted any Force user would be able to knock her off her feet now.

Phasma continued to scream. Hux finally smiled. Protocol One had begun.


	6. Chapter 6

The Falcon touched down on Kajimi behind a rocky outcrop. They’d moved in quietly, Poe ordering the rest of the fleet to stay in orbit. Suspiciously, there were no First Order ships. No star destroyers above the planet, and no troops below. Poe was adamant it must be a trap, but Rey and Finn said they couldn’t sense anything. Poe usually aspired to more than vague feelings when he made plans, but he acquiesced. Best not to argue with the Jedi on Jedi things. The Falcon’s feet landed on slick rock with a slight thud and a groan from the internal machinery. The ramp opened with a hiss. Finn, Rey, Poe, Rose, and Chewie walked out, wrapped in robes to ward off the rain.

The rain was manageable; a consistent drizzle that didn’t obscure too much visibility. It was dark, which made navigating their descent down to the village more difficult. Feet slipped on wet rock, and fell through gaps where it appeared there was a foothold only moments before. But no First Order troops fired on them as they descended. Eventually, the group reached the ground, and raced behind a nearby building for cover.

Finn poked his head around the corner. Nothing. No movement at all, First Order or otherwise. He looked back at Rey, who shook her head. Nothing in the Force either. Or… Almost nothing. Finn kept looking, but Rey had felt something. Not movement, not a threat. But something, and something she didn’t like.

Rey pushed off the wall and began walking into the centre of town. Poe emitted a gasp of shock and exasperation. If the First Order were laying a trap, there was a good chance they’d all be lined up along main street. Exactly where Rey was walking.

“Everyone here is dead, Poe. Let’s find Maz,” said Rey, sensing his frustration. Poe mumbled something under his breath. As he looked up, the rest of the group was already following Rey. He jogged to catch up with them.

From the next street, they could see what had happened. Blaster burns scored every building. Doors had been kicked in, and bodies could be seen next to burnt out fireplaces. Whatever had happened here, it had happened recently. Some buildings stood open to the rain, rooves and walls blown open by explosive devices. Barricades had been set up blocking the streets, but each was busted open, scrap metal scattered all over the streets. The Kajimi defences hadn’t last long.

It had been the First Order. As they progressed, the bodies of local militia lined the streets, along with the occasional stormtrooper. The militia had fought hard, and had given all they had. It hadn’t been enough.

“Any idea where Maz was working?” asked Rose. Poe shook his head. Finn and Chewie checked every house, to no avail.

Rey stopped in the middle of the street. Her eyes were closed. She knew something was wrong. Violence and death always caused disturbances in the Force, but this was different. The fabric of the Force hadn’t been crumpled up, pressed together by panic and adrenaline. It had been torn. Rey knew of only one man in the galaxy who caused such damage.

She felt something else, too. A little pulse of life. She opened her eyes, and looked to her left. A few streets down, a communications tower rose from one of the houses.

“Down there, the house with the communications tower. That’s where Maz is,” said Rey.

“How do you know?” asked Poe. Rey looked at him. Poe simply nodded. Jedi things.

The group headed for the house. Here, bodies filled the streets almost completely. Rey noticed how viciously many of them had been killed. Burns from a lightsaber patterned their bodies in a like grisly sashes. A body lay across the doorway to the house, their helmet crumpled in on itself, their head crushed. Rey sighed. She should have stopped him at the Resistance base, when she had the chance. Finn put his hand on her shoulder, and gave her a gentle smile. Rey tried to smile back, but she couldn’t get the thought out of her mind.

The group entered the building. It was a mess, but relatively intact, suggesting that the mess probably existed prior to the First Order attack. Across the room, a large terminal with wires reaching up to the roof was smashed to pieces, the occasional spark still spitting from its ruptured internal machinery. Next to the terminal, on the floor with her back to the wall, was Maz.

Rey raced up to her, and took her hand. She was cold, but as Rey touched her, Maz’s eyes opened slightly. She inhaled a thin, shaky breath.

“Maz! Maz, stay with us, please!” shouted Rey. Maz’s eyes seemed unfocused. Each breath came paired with a horrible rattling from inside her chest.

“Where is… my… boyfriend…” said Maz, labouring on each word. Chewie crouched down beside her, took her other hand, and pressed his head to hers. He growled to her, softly.

Maz smiled. Rey noticed the blood on the corner of her mouth. Maz pressed her head back towards Chewie, ever so slightly, accompanied by a particularly harrowing rattle. She sighed. The rattle stopped. Her head slumped away from Chewie, towards the wall. Behind them, Poe, Finn, and Rose stood with their heads bowed. A moment passed in silence, only broken by the soft, pattering sounds of the rain.

Chewie kept his head bowed to Maz’s. Rey placed Maz’s other hand on Chewie’s, then stood to her feet.

“Maz isn’t…” Rey ventured.

“No… She isn’t,” said Poe. “And her terminal is fried. I don’t think we’re going to find out the base’s location here.” He walked up to the terminal again, and stroked his chin in thought. Rose frowned at him. He seemed remarkably composed.

“Mustafar,” said a voice. The group turned. It seemed to come from behind the pile of Separatist robots Maz had been collecting. From behind the pile, out rolled a little droid. He rolled up to Maz’s side, looking up at her face.

“Maz. Sad. Sad…” said the droid. Rey crouched down beside him. He turned to look at her.

“Mustafar,” the droid offered again. Rey smiled, and put her hand on the droid’s head.

“Hi there. What’s your name?” asked Rey.

“D-0. Sad?” said D-0.

“Rey. I’m sad too. We’re all gonna miss Maz. What’s Mustafar?”

“Bad. Bad. Bad. Enemy.”

“Thank you for telling us, D-0.” Rey paused, noticing D-0’s bent antenna. She took a moment to straighten it up.

Poe looked down at the droid in shock.

“Did you know this droid was here?” he asked.

“No. I sensed Maz, but nothing else. He was a surprise to all of us,” said Rey.

“So, Mustafar. There’s a base on Mustafar,” said Rose.

“Can’t be anything good. But if it’s a First Order base, and we squash it… We might turn this thing around,” said Poe. The group nodded in agreement. Rey looked back at Chewie, who hadn’t moved away from Maz.

“Chewie. Are you ready to go?” asked Rey.

Chewie made a small noise of agreement. He removed his robe, and wrapped it around Maz’s body, before picking her up in his arms.

“Follow?” asked D-0.

“Of course,” said Rey. D-0 rolled around in a small circle, emitting a beep of excitement.

The group left Maz’s control tower, and headed back to the Falcon. The rain never completely stopped on Kajimi, but it had turned down into a fine drizzle. On the horizon, the sun rose, bathing the world in orange that reflected off every surface. The Falcon’s ramp rose back into the ship, and the whole hull shook as its blue engines fired up. It rose into the air, and returned to the waiting fleet.

\---

The Falcon drifted amongst the other Resistance ships. Inside, things were quiet. Routine maintenance work was performed by BB-8 and R2D2. Chewie placed Maz’s body into a capsule in the ship’s cargo hold, to preserve it until they could properly lay her to rest. Lando and Rose played sabacc in the common area, where C3PO introduced himself to D-0. Finn rested on the floor, leafing through one of Rey’s illicit Jedi texts. Poe napped in the cockpit.

In a dormitory, Rey meditated. She felt the Force twisting around her. She felt grass under her hands, and smelt sea air. Rey groaned. She did not want to see Kylo Ren right now.

And when she opened her eyes, she didn’t. She remained sitting next to her bed. In front of her was a figure, a shimmering, semi-translucent blue. Wearing an old Jedi robe. A familiar, bearded face. Luke Skywalker.

“Master Skywalker!” gasped Rey, surprised. Luke smiled back.

“Rey. I have a final task for you, in order to complete your training. Return to Ahch-To as soon as you can,” said Luke.

“Master, I have so many questions.”

“Not now. On Ahch-To.”

Rey nodded. Luke dissolved into the air around him. Once he was gone, Rey leapt up, and sprinted into the common room.

She skidded through the door. Rose, Lando, and Finn looked up, concerned.

“I saw Luke!” she shouted, racing over to a panel on the wall. Poe and Chewbacca entered from the hallway. Everyone stared at Rey, dumbfounded, as she pressed a button and projected a holographic galactic map across the common room. The map spun, and then zoomed in on a single planet. There was little available information. It was a little-known planet. Ahch-To. The original home of the Jedi Order.

“You saw… Luke Skywalker?” asked Finn.

“Yes. Luke Skywalker. He says I can finish my training on Ahch-To. I have to go there!” said Rey.

“How was he?” asked Lando.

“Uh, cryptic… blue…” said Rey.

“He always was cryptic,” said Lando.

Poe walked into the room, over to the section of the map depicting Ahch-To.

“Do you need more training?” asked Finn.

“Of course. We need all the help we can get now, right?” said Rey.

“That might just work. Right now, we don’t even know where Mustafar is,” said Poe. “It doesn’t appear on many modern star charts. We assume the Empire tried to erase evidence that it even exists.”

“You think Luke Skywalker knows where Mustafar is?” asked Rose.

“Maybe. Not what I was thinking. I’m not planning to rely on the ghosts of hermits right now,” said Poe. “Sorry, Rey,” he added, noticing her frown. Chewie walked up to the panel and pressed a few buttons, reconfiguring the galaxy map around a different planet. Kashyyk.

“Chewie has heard of Mustafar, but we don’t have exact co-ordinates. The Wookies on Kashyyk have ancient star charts. Good odds that Mustafar appears on one of them, one made before the Empire,” said Poe.

Chewie growled.

“Chewbacca hopes his reputation will encourage the chieftains to trust us, but since the Empire was only recently removed, they are less than inclined to trust,” said Threepio, translating.

“They especially don’t trust anybody who’s ever been associated with the First Order, or anybody with a lightsaber,” said Poe, looking meaningfully at Finn and Rey. “So if you two head off to Ahch-To for some training, the rest of us can get the map. We’ll send Demi with you too… If the Wookies see us with a TIE Fighter, they’re not going to ask for an explanation before they start blasting.”Rey and Finn nodded.

The common room burst into activity again. Rey and Finn headed for Poe’s X-Wing, with D-0 following at their heels. From the cockpit of the Falcon, Poe could see the X-Wing lining up with Demi’s TIE Fighter. He sat down in the co-pilot’s chair, next to Chewie, and entered the co-ordinates for Kahsyyk. In a burst of blue light, the fleet headed for Kashyyk, a smaller flash heading the opposite way for Ahch-To.


	7. Chapter 7

Kylo Ren felt something change. Something on _The Supremacy_. Something that did not bode well for him. He was meditating by the helmet of Darth Vader, receiving memories through it, memories that he lived as though he was there.

Kylo knew of the might of the Empire. But now he _felt_ it. He learned of whole cities bowing of their own volition. Of armies of stormtroopers razing them if they didn’t. Planets dominated under the feet of AT-STs, and demolished under AT-ATs for resisting. The Emperor’s voice taught him of the Force, how it could be manipulated and controlled. How it could be drained from the blood of his enemies, from the flora and fauna around him, from the very core of planets as the Death Star had done. Kylo Ren had learned so much, in so little time. Which was why he was so tuned to the Force when Protocol One began.

Kylo Ren had been prepared. He had collected a bag full of supplies, which he slung over his shoulder. He clipped Darth Vader’s helmet to his belt. It swung on his hip, like a grim trophy of war from a forgotten era. The Emperor’s voice never stopped whispering to him. Kylo had his lightsaber drawn and ignited.

The door to his room opened, and two First Order deathtroopers entered, dressed in all-black armour. As the door opened, Kylo swung, slicing the first trooper diagonally down the chest. He raised his hand, and the other flew back out the doorway, slamming into the hallway wall with a thud. Kylo marched outside. He could sense them all now, not just their presence, but the way they moved, the way they thought. To his left, a blaster bolt, which he dodged. It crossed to the other side of the hall, embedding itself in the chest of another trooper. Dozens of troops filled each side of the hallway. Kylo Ren closed his eyes. The world around him erupted into burning neon light.

The blaster fired continued for ten seconds. When it ended, the hallway was nearly completed covered in blaster burns. The metal of the walls sizzled with residual heat. Kylo Ren remained standing, without a scratch on him, one hand raised to either side. All the stormtroopers on both sides were dead. He smiled, and headed towards the bridge.

The ship was busy. Troopers ran all over, shouting at each other, passing around datapads, getting yelled at by officers and scrambling to follow new orders. Kylo ducked behind a cargo crate in a ship bay, and looked around. He wasn’t sure what was happening, and it seemed neither were the stormtroopers. Kylo knew Hux was up to something. He’d seen it in Hux’s eyes ever since Krait. Hux was still scared of Kylo, but now there was something else. A hatred, which was normal, but a glint of determination. A smug acquiescence to every order. Kylo guessed that Hux’s plan was now in action. They would need to have a conversation.

Kylo slipped through the hangar, into an adjacent hallway. The bridge was nearby. He was somewhat surprised nobody was looking for him. Hux had always been arrogant. He must have expected fifty stormtroopers to be enough to kill Kylo Ren. He would be sorely disappointed. Kylo grimaced at the thought of all of his troops following Hux’s orders so readily. Traitors. Idiots. He considered heading back into the hangar and eliminating all of them. But punishment would come after he dealt with Hux.

Ahead of him were two troopers, staring out a window at a great expanse of stars.

“They pulled all troops off Kajimi?” asked the first trooper.

“Yeah, every single one, even though the Resistance is obviously going to head there next. It doesn’t make any sense. He did have a small team down there working, but they got pulled back too,” answered the second.

“Heh. And then you got told to order the engine crew to flush the exhaust hatches?”

“Yup. And you got told to order the engine crew to keep the exhaust hatches shut?”

“Yup.”

“Huh.”

“Yup.”

“What’re we gonna do?”

“Could just stand here.”

“Yup. Could just stand here.”

“They haven’t paid us for the last cycle anyway.”

“Yup. Standing’s good.”

Kylo had heard enough. He raised a hand, and felt the Force twisting around their heads. He swung his hand across. Both troopers heads smashed against the glass window in front of them. The glass splintered, but held. Both troopers collapsed to the floor.

Kylo moved down two more hallways, evading officers running around in a panic. He had reached the door of the bridge. It was sealed. Kylo could hear movement behind it, information being shouted, orders barked back in response. Kylo smiled. He loved to surprise people.

Kylo Ren wrenched the door open with the Force. He ripped it away from the wall, and tossed it off to one side of the bridge. Everyone inside stopped moving. Several had pulled out their blasters. None fired. On the raised platform at the top of the bridge, looking out the large, triangular windows, was General Hux. Kylo stormed up to the foot of the stairs, and ignited his lightsaber.

“I was hoping you’d be dead already,” said Hux, turning to face Kylo. He wore a smug smirk. He felt he had already won. Hux glanced at the destroyed helmet of the former Darth Vader hanging from Kylo’s hip, and frowned slightly.

“I will cut you down for this insubordination,” hissed Kylo. He took a step up towards Hux, fuming.

“No. I don’t think you will. You have failed the First Order for the last time, Kylo Ren. Your petty grievances have allowed the Resistance to escape again and again. No longer.”

“You cannot stop me.”

“No, not personally.”

Kylo heard the booming footsteps behind him. He turned, and swung, but his saber was knocked away by a gigantic shock-axe. It was Captain Phasma. Somehow. Impossibly.

Kylo dodged to his right, and summoned his saber back to him. It was Phasma, but it was somehow worse. She wore her chrome armour, half covered with burns as before. Her left arm was still mechanical, massive and inelegant. But her lower body… Machine now, too. Heavy machinery. Phasma had always been tall, but now she towered over Kylo Ren.

Kylo raised his hand. He pushed at Phasma with the Force. Nothing. Phasma marched towards him, raising the axe above her head. Hux laughed. Kylo could see some kind of crystal structure embedded in Phasma’s mechanical legs. In her arm now, too. Kyber crystals. Hux had planned for this for a long time, it seemed.

Phasma swung down again, and Kylo again dodged. But Phasma was quicker now. Quicker than he thought possible. As he dodged, she swung sideways, the fizzing electrical edge of the weapon slicing into Kylo’s left hand side, below the rib. Kylo fell away, and stumbled to the ground. He looked up at the massive machine Captain, struggling to get off his back.

“Your mistake, Kylo Ren, was trying to be like Darth Vader. Trying to revive a dead sect of wizards. But if the past has taught us anything, Kylo, it’s that your magic doesn’t win wars. Machines do. Machines. Ships. Weapons. Droids. Clones. Technology, not magic,” said Hux, gloating. He had specifically ordered everyone on the bridge not to fire, if Kylo made an appearance. Hux felt the poetry of Kylo being killed by Phasma was far too important.

Captain Phasma swung down at the prone Kylo Ren. Kylo sensed it a moment before it came, at the last second, and rolled over towards the door. The axe crashed against the floor of the bridge, its edge slightly melting the metal where Kylo had just been. Kylo scrambled to his feet and sprinted for the door. The gash in his side leaked blood, and he felt it twinge with each movement, but adrenaline pushed him through. Blaster fire laced the walls around him, and burned at his heels. _Traitors,_ he thought. _Cowards. Waited to see who would win before they chose a side._ Kylo Ren would punish them all, in time.

Kylo ran. Down identical silver hallways, past baffled stormtroopers, through a haze of blaster fire. He made it to the main hangar bay, where his ship waited for him. But Kylo sensed something was off before he even entered. He sprinted through the door, tossed the stormtrooper in front of him aside with the Force, and deflected a blaster bolt back at the pilot trooper who had fired it. But Kylo knew. He looked over to his ship as it exploded, detonated by two troopers holding rocket launchers. A squadron of deathtroopers marched in from the entrance across from Kylo, blasters already flaring. Kylo ducked back into the hallway. More troopers. He deflected their shots back at them. He could hear the deathtroopers racing towards him.

Hux had complete control of the ship. He had assigned every person on it to kill Kylo Ren. And he knew exactly how Kylo thought. Exactly what Kylo was going to do.

“He knows not what you have,” whispered the helmet hanging from Kylo’s belt. The Emperor. Of course.

“The exhaust hatches, Kylo Ren. Escape. Trust me.”

The exhaust hatches were at the rear end of the ship, near the engines. Theoretically, one could escape through them. Out into the inhospitable vacuum of space. But Kylo had few options. He sprinted down the hallway once again, dodging blaster fire, tossing troopers out of his path. The deathtroopers maintained pace behind him. Kylo caught a blaster bolt in the shoulder as he ran. He stumbled, but kept his feet.

The engine hall of _The Supremacy_ was vast. It rose the entire height of the ship, and its chrome walls were constantly covered in black soot and illuminated by the gigantic flames of the engines. Next to each engine, on either side, was an exhaust port. Currently, the ones ahead of Kylo Ren had been left open, meaning they were accessible through a single airlock.

A pilot trooper turned to him, surprised, as he entered. He tried to raise his blaster, but Kylo lifted him into the air with the Force and slammed him into the ground. Kylo sprinted past, snatching the troopers helmet and tossing it onto his head as he ran by. The deathtroopers entered the engine hall, and fired. Kylo could barely see through the storm of blaster bolts, but he felt the helmet on his hip pulse, and felt the Force shift into a barrier around him.

Kylo slid over to a maintenance hatch, and slammed the button to open it. He crawled inside. The hatch hissed closed ahead of him. He was now inside a tiny tube, barely big enough for one person. Ahead of him was another hatch. The lights on it flashed red, three times, and then turned green. The hatch opened, and Kylo was pulled out into the vacuum of space.

Silence. Then pain. Kylo could still breathe, but it didn’t feel right. He felt as though he would collapse in on himself, if it wasn’t for the Force energy radiating from Vader’s helmet holding him together.

“Reach out. Pull,” said the Emperor’s voice. Kylo reached out his hand, and drew the Force towards him. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, Kylo felt himself move. He looked ahead, and saw a TIE Fighter being pulled towards him, the pilot frantically twisting at the joystick.

Kylo thudded into the window of the fighter. The pilot, stunned, hit nearly every button on the console in front of him, trying to throw Kylo off. Nearly every button. Kylo Ren raised a finger. The pilot’s hand moved towards the eject button. He tried to resist, but Kylo felt the helmet aiding him. The pilot’s finger hovered over the eject button. He pulled back. Kylo and the helmet wrapped the Force tighter around his hand, and forced it down. The pilot’s finger pressed down on the button. With a hiss of decompression, the TIE Fighter’s access hatch oepend, and the pilot was and launched into space, back towards _The Supremacy_ as it slowly got further and further away. Kylo clambered onto the roof of the fighter, slipped into the cockpit, and closed the hatch above him. He pulled off the pilot helmet and took a deep breath.

“Good. Good. Now.” Kylo saw the co-ordinates on the ship’s computer change. The Endor system.

“Why?” asked Kylo.

“The site of our greatest defeat. A repository of power. There, you will find what you seek, Kylo Ren.”

Against the backdrop of _The Supremacy_ , the TIE Fighter zipped off into hyperspace.


	8. Chapter 8

Poe’s X-Wing and Demi’s TIE Fighter touched down on a wide plateau at sea level, below the village where Luke Skywalker once lived. Porgs screeched as they landed, and flew up higher on the mountain, eyeing the ships behind little rocky crags in the cliff-face. Finn, Rey, Demi, and D-0 exited, and began to make their way up the stairs of Luke’s island.

Rey walked slowly up the staircase leading to the village. Last time she was here, Luke had been alive. She regretted so much of what she’d said to him. But in the end, it hadn’t mattered. Luke had shown up when he was needed. And he was still offering his help, no matter how little Rey had seemed to want it.

Finn was stunned. Ahch-To was beautiful, and quiet. He entirely understood why Luke had run away here. If you’re gonna be a hermit, you might as well do it somewhere beautiful.

Demi was still puzzled. Nobody had explained all this Jedi business to her. She’d known Kylo Ren had strange powers, she’d heard that Rey had the same, and she’d heard of Luke Skywalker before. But only in negative terms, only as terror that ruined the Empire and nearly destroyed the galaxy. Now, apparently, he was a good guy? And controlled the fabric of the universe with his hands? She figured it was best just to stay quiet.

D-0 was preoccupied with the stairs, which were a challenge to climb when one’s body consisted of a single wheel. Luckily, he could hop high enough to clear each step.

The group reached the top of the staircase, and the foot of the hill where the village was built. It was small, only a few buildings, each a dome made of grey stone brick. Two bird-like figures dressed in simple white robes bustled at the wall of one of the houses, adding grout to some replaced brickwork. These were the Lanai. One of them turned, noticed Rey, and scowled. The Lanai did not like Rey. She was the reason much of the brickwork needed replacing.

Rey glanced at them, sheepishly, and made her way to the centre of the village. The houses were mostly aligned in a circle, around an empty central space. A few others were built on the hills above, looking down on the informal town square. Rey looked around. It was just as she remembered it. Which was a problem, because she had no idea what Luke had left here for her.

Finn began looking around, poking his head into each of the houses. He quickly found Luke’s former home. It was mostly the same as all the others, with a few more bits and pieces scattered around. A robe, some metal canisters, a broken datapad. Finn picked up the datapad and tried to bring it back to life. Nothing. Surely, Luke couldn’t have brought Rey back here for any of this?

Demi walked up to the working Lanai. Both were standing on little stepladders. One held bricks, and the other applied the grout to hold them together. As Demi walked up, the brick-holder dropped her bucket of bricks to the ground, narrowly missing D-0 as he zipped around underfoot. She began to climb down the ladder to collect them. Demi raced up, placed the bricks back in the bucket, and handed them up to the Lanai. The Lanai purred appreciatively, and began chattering back and forth between Demi and the other Lanai. Demi smiled, and shrugged. The language of bird-people on an ancient Jedi planet didn’t show up in the First Order education syllabus.

The Lanai realised this, and stopped chattering. Instead, she pointed, up the hill, past all the houses up to where the path curved right around the mountain. Demi didn’t know what was up there, but it was more than they had before.

“Hey, uh, Rey? Finn? This… guy is pointing up the hill, is there something up there?” asked Demi, looking back at Rey. Finn appeared up the hill, walking out of Luke’s house.

“The old Jedi temple. It’s not much to look at, but… maybe,” said Rey. They regrouped, and walked up the hill.

It was a little way further up that the rock wall broke open into a doorway. Through the door was an ancient Jedi temple, little more than a cave with a raised platform in the centre. Rey and Finn could feel the Force concentrated here, pulsing more strongly, as though the air itself had grown thicker. Demi could feel the air grow both colder and mustier. Given the look of wonder on Finn’s face, she supposed that mustiness must be an aspect of the Force’s presence.

Rey crossed the temple, and exited out the opening on the other side. It led to a familiar rock ledge. A ledge where she had meditated, and felt the Force flow through everything, with Luke by her side. Now, it was adorned with a simple brown robe. She picked it up, and closed her eyes, trying to feel the Force flowing through it. Nothing. She checked the hidden internal pockets. Nothing.

Rey took a moment, to look out on the ocean. Luke’s last sight before he joined with the Force. The robe was not what Luke had summoned her to find. But Rey tossed it over her shoulder anyway, before returning to the temple interior.

Rey found Finn examining the platform in the centre of the room, and Demi examining the walls.

“Any luck?” asked Finn.

“No. This is Luke’s robe, but…” began Rey, who then paused. The temple felt twice as large around her. It still looked the same, but she sensed a hidden depth. A chamber, beneath the platform. As Rey noticed, Finn did too, the chamber appearing to them both as though a blockage had disappeared, allowing the Force to flow through it again. Rey smiled. The robe hadn’t been what she was looking for, but it had held a key. A memory. Luke had made sure nobody would find the chamber below the temple without his express permission.

Rey raised both hands. Finn stepped back into the entry doorway. Demi glanced at Finn quizzically, and then stepped back as well. Rey searched the room with the Force. She found that the section of stone surrounding the raised platform was not as sturdy as it seemed. Rey reached out with the Force. The stone responded, and began to descend, growling and grinding against itself as it moved. Block by block, each one lower than the last. A stairway.

Finn and Demi ran up to the first stair.

“Could you sense this before?” said Finn.

“No, not until I held the robe… Luke must have hidden it,” said Rey.

“Why?” asked Demi.

“He must have been saving this until I was ready,” said Rey. The group looked at each other, and then down into the inky blackness of the lower chamber. Rey took the first step down into the dark.

Rey ignited Luke’s saber on the way down, to give them some light. They descended into a room the same size as the temple chamber above. It was filled with what appeared to be scrap metal; mostly in small pieces, bits of chrome silver and dull black, as well as occasional spots of wood or glass. As Rey’s eyes adjusted, she realised what it was. Lightsaber pieces, all disassembled, piled on the floor and on multi-level shelves that lined the entire round wall of the chamber. Enough pieces for a thousand lightsabers.

In the middle of the room was another raised platform, again made of stone, but this time without any of the markings of the pedestal in the main chamber above. On it rested a golden crystal, glowing of its own accord. Rey felt as though every part of herself was being drawn towards it. Finn felt it to, but more as though he was holding on to someone being pulled. Rey raced over to the crystal, and knelt before it, the crystal’s golden glow reflecting in her eyes.

Suddenly, Luke’s saber dis-ignited. The room did not go dark. The golden glow in the middle of the room was met with another blue glow, emanating from across from Rey. Demi gasped. Across from Rey, kneeling as she was, was Luke Skywalker. A shimmering, shifting version, semi-transparent, and radiating calming blue light. Luke smiled at Rey.

“A Jedi needs a lightsaber, Rey. It’s time you stopped using a hand-me-down,” said Luke, his hands flat on the raised stone in front of him. Rey placed hers across from his, the crystal between them.

“Close your eyes,” said Luke. Rey closed her eyes. For several seconds, nothing happened. Just the crystal, tugging at her spirit. Then, she felt it. Other ripples in the Force, tugging at her. From every corner of the room. Metal clinked and clattered to the ground, as specific pieces from deep within each pile rose into the air. The pieces floated over towards Rey, and gently landed on the stone table, arranged like a deconstructed lightsaber.

Rey opened her eyes, and looked down. She was surprised. There were fewer pieces in a lightsaber than expected. There was a frame to hold the crystal, an emitter on one end to focus the blade, a hilt on the other to hold on to, and a button with a metal ring attached that encircled the crystal frame and connected the emitter and hilt.

Rey noticed a second emitter lying on the table, resting at the far end of the hilt. A second emitter, for a second blade.

“Every Jedi wielded a different saber. Most chose a single blade, for balance, and precision. Some used two different sabers; speed, aggression. Some augmented their saber, like Kylo Ren, for specific uses. In his case, to cause additional damage, and for an advantage over anyone who would wield another saber against him,” said Luke.

“Some had two blades in a single saber, to defend against multiple enemies at once. Of course, sometimes a Jedi had two sabers, or two blades in one weapon, because it felt right. Like wielding your staff has always felt right, Rey.”

Rey glanced up at Luke, and smiled. Finn and Demi stood in awed silence by the stairs.

“What do I do?” asked Rey. Luke raised his hands, palms up, from the table, and closed his eyes. Rey did the same.

She felt the parts shifting again, rising into the air once more. Luke guided her, through the Force. Rey wrapped her mind around the golden crystal, and slid it into place inside its wiry metal frame. It fit perfectly, with a soft click. Then, the hilt, slipped over it, with another click. The button ring – Click. The emitters twisted on, and again clicked when they were ready. It had been so simple. The parts had wanted to fall together, to meld themselves into a whole. Rey opened her eyes. Her lightsaber hovered before her. She breathed, and let go of the Force. The lightsaber dropped into her hands.

Rey ran her thumb along the hilt of the weapon. It had a grip, course and rough but not unpleasant, much like the sands of Jakku. The other side was wooden, and overlapped slightly with both emitters. It reminded her of the endless trees she had seen on Takodana, and of Maz Kanata. Rey cherished the thought. The button was on a small sliding switch that moved up and down, to control activation of either one or both blades.

Rey moved the switch down, and pressed the button. Golden light shot out of each end of the lightsaber, far brighter than the crystal had been, turning all the metal in the room to gold. It reflected in Demi’s wide eyes as she realised what few stories she’d heard about Jedi were true; in Finn’s eyes as he laughed and cheered Rey on; and in Rey’s eyes, as she looked over to her master, and then back down at the weapon, as pride and determination. She had finally finished her training.

Rey dis-ignited the weapon, the room returned to a cool blue. Luke remained sitting across from her.

“I’m proud of you Rey. But we don’t have much time. Close your eyes again,” he said. Rey closed her eyes. She felt the world around her shift. It grew colder. She could smell salt in the air, and began to be peppered by sprays of water. Rey opened her eyes, and looked around.

She still had her saber, and Luke was still across from her at the stone table. But the table had moved placed. They kneeled on the massive, metal hull of a crashed… something. Rey had never seen anything like it. It was a colossus of steel, warped and crushed and dumped into an ocean.

Across from them was a sheer cliff of metal, what once must have been a massive hallway inside a capital ship. A figure in black rose up the metal wall, lunging for handholds, leaping far higher each time than any regular person would be capable of. Rey identified Kylo Ren immediately.

“This was once the Death Star,” said Luke. “The Empire almost used this to control the whole galaxy. They failed. But it was also the site of the Emperor’s power. The Dark Side lives on here.”

Rey watched as Kylo summited the wall. Some figures scurried away as he approached, Jawas in navy robes. Kylo paid them no mind. He was looking for something, ducking in and out of each demolished room.

“I don’t know what Kylo Ren wants here. But it can’t be anything good. You have to stop him, Rey,” said Luke. Rey blinked, and was back in the lightsaber workshop. Luke’s eyes remained closed.

“I could have stopped him, before…” Rey began.

“You did the right thing, Rey. You protected your friends.”

“But if I’d stopped him then-.”

“Then there might not be a Resistance. Find the Death Star on the ocean moon of Endor. Stop Kylo Ren.” Luke looked up at Rey, and smiled, and then he was gone. The room grew dark. Rey knelt by the table in silence.

Finn walked up to her, and knelt beside her. He put his hand on her shoulder, and picked up Luke’s saber.

“I guess I’m the one stuck with a hand-me-down now. Come on. Let’s stop Kylo,” said Finn, igniting Luke’s saber and lighting the room once again. Rey smiled at him, and they both rose to their feet

Outside the temple, the sun was high in the sky, and light danced on the calm ocean surrounding the temple island of Ahch-To. The group began towards their ships, and towards the ruins of the Death Star.


	9. Chapter 9

Chewie wove his way down a narrow path, carved into the ground by thousands of footsteps. He ducked under low-hanging branches, and brushed aside the dozens of thick, dark vines that crisscrossed all over. Chewie was surprised by how easily he remembered moving through the dense forests of Kashyyk. It must have been like riding a hoverbike: one never entirely forgot how.

Things were not going as easily for the rest of the group. Poe, Rose, and Lando were wrapped in cloth, to try and fend off the biting insects that swarmed around them. Chewie had forgotten about the insects. Wookie fur was remarkably insect-proof, so Chewie hadn’t been bitten by anything in years. It was the bigger insects of Kashyyk he had to worry about, but none had dive-bombed him just yet.

Where Chewie’s large feet seemed to find solid ground, Poe kept slipping on patches of moss or treacherously smooth roots. Rose struggled to see through the little light that slipped through the canopy of trees, and kept running into hanging branches. Lando was assailed by vines on all sides. He couldn’t be sure they weren’t moving, chasing him, ready to wrap him up if he slowed for even a second.

The humans had been happy when they landed; on a rocky plateau just rising over the ocean, set against a beautiful yellow beach. Chewie found it a little warm. The sand always got stuck in his fur. They’d trotted up the beach, which ended abruptly as the sand gave way to the network of winding roots that covered the forest floor. The gargantuan trees rose up above them like sentinels guarding a gate. Chewie had entered the forest unperturbed, apparently seeing a path in amongst the roots. The humans had followed with much more trepidation.

Chewie was looking for a village. Wookie villages blended in with the forest, only noticeable if one knew what they were looking for. Chewie wondered how the Empire or the First Order had even tried to control Kashkyyk. He imagined any stormtrooper assigned here would have had an awful time, and smiled at the thought.

Chewie had a large metal capsule strapped to his back. It was heavy, and uncomfortable, but vital. It was the pod where he had placed Maz’s body, and he planned to bury her on Kashyyk. He’d agonised over the decision. Maybe she would’ve preferred Takodana, or to have been shot out into space so he’d stop worrying about something so unimportant. But Chewie felt it was important, and Kashyyk was a good place to rest.

The group walked for a couple of hours. Chewie stopped every so often, to give the humans a chance to catch up. He was constantly on the lookout for signs pointing the way to the village. Not signs that would be visible to outsider eyes, but suspiciously broken branches, or vines woven together in a specific way. Wookie signs. Chewie finally noticed one, a branch wrapped in a double helix of vines hanging perpendicular to the forest floor. He took a left.

The signs were obvious now, at least to Chewie. Branches snapped above a fork in the road spoke to left or right. A pattern of roots on the ground told Chewie to continue down the path, while a flower growing from inside the rotting trunk of a fallen tree suggested he look around for a hidden path. The humans did not see such signs. They felt as though they had walked for hours through identical forest, and were getting nowhere very slowly.

It wasn’t long before the group found themselves at the base of a massive tree. More massive than all of the other massive trees. Chewie looked up, and growled back towards the group. Poe frowned. _Apparently, we’re here_ , he thought. _But I can’t see any-._

Abruptly, Poe stopped the thought, as he felt the barrel of a blaster pushed into his back. Rose and Lando felt the same. In front of Chewie, two Wookies stepped out, blasters aimed at his chest rather than his back out of respect. Chewie began growling rapidly, his pitch changing up and down faster than Poe could catch it. Poe belatedly realised that every time Chewie spoke to him in Shyriiwook, he was speaking slowly so Poe could catch it. The speed of the conversation between Wookies was astounding. Poe was more astounded to realise he wished they’d brought C-3PO with them.

The conversation between Chewie and the Kashyyk Wookies stopped. Chewie walked up and hugged one of them. Poe assumed things had gone well. The other Wookie walked over to the side of the tree, pulled away some shrubbery, and revealed a staircase leading up. The blasters dropped from the backs of Poe, Rose, and Lando. Rose breathed a sigh of relief. Lando laughed, almost covering up his nerves.

Poe glanced over his shoulder, and realised it wasn’t a Wookie behind him. The figure was roughly his height, and covered in armour. Their helmet and breastplate were glimmering bronze, and they donned a cloak of green and brown camouflage over their shoulders. The helmet had the distinctive T-shaped visor of the Mandalorians.

“The Mandalorians are here?” Poe asked, turning around to face the figure behind him.

“Sure are, General Poe,” said the Mandalorian. Poe couldn’t help but think their voice was familiar.

“You know who we are?”

“They don’t. Wookies don’t. But I do.”

“And how is that?”

“When was the last time you saw your sister, Poe?”

With that, Poe recognised the voice.

“Celly? I thought I told you to stay on Yavin, and not to get into any trouble!” laughed Poe, reaching out and drawing the Mandalorian into a hug. Not just any Mandalorian. His sister, Celine Dameron.

Celly hugged him back. “You ever think about following your own advice?” she asked.

“Never.”

The group made their way up the staircase, which appeared as though it had grown naturally out of the tree itself. Chewie led the way with the two Wookies, explaining what had happened, asking about what had happened on Kashyyk, and apologising for the humans. Lando and Rey chatted with the other two Mandalorians in the middle of the pack. Poe and Celly followed at the rear of the group.

“So, you can’t take the helmet off at all?” asked Poe.

“Nope, never. You lose your helmet, you lose your honour, and you never show your face around the Mandalorians again anyway,” said Celly.

“And why did you do this to yourself?”

“Come on, Poe. We’ve always been similar. Mum and Dad left to fight for the Rebellion. You left to fight for the Resistance. What else was I going to do? When the Mandalorians showed up, I asked to join, and they said no. So I tried to punch one of them in the head, to prove I was tough, and uhh… it didn’t go well, but they liked my moxy, so they brought me with them.”

“You tried to punch a Mandalorian in the head? You knew about the helmets, right?”

“I learned pretty quickly,” said Celly. Poe laughed.

As they rose up into the tree, Poe could see little houses scattered among the branches. Wookies worked all over: cooking, cleaning, repairing. An elder Wookie barked at some Wookie children, who were gawking at the humans. The Wookies laughed, and scattered away as the elder began banging his walking stick on the branch-path ahead of him.

“How did the Mandalorians end up here?” said Poe.

“The Mandalorians were in hiding, after the Empire fell. Eventually, we were revealed, and we beat what was left of the Empire back. Started going all around the galaxy, to clear up Empire sects. By the time we’d cleared Kashyyk, the First Order were after us specifically, and they were more organised than what was left of the Empire, so we had to lay low again. We’ve been working with the Wookies ever since.”

“That explains why I haven’t seen any Mandalorians around. You never thought of joining the Resistance?”

“Me? Sure. But I’m a Mandalorian now. I go where the rest go.”

“Will the Mandalorians help us?”

“You’ll have to ask the Mandalore,” said Celly. “Our leader,” she added, when Poe gave her a blank stare.

They had reached the top of the staircase now, which opened up onto a vast plateau surrounding the tree trunk. Wookies and Mandalorians bustled around, dozens of them. Poe couldn’t believe this plateau wasn’t visible from the ground, given its size. Above, it was covered with a canopy of leaves and branches, only occasionally broken to allow light.

Chewie led them to the tree trunk itself, which was dotted with doorways. They entered, into a wide chamber with a long table down the middle. Sitting at the table were three ornately-dressed Wookies, and a Mandalorian wearing a golden helmet. Poe looked at Celly, who nodded. These must be the Wookie chiefs Chewie was looking for, and the Mandalore.

Chewie, Poe, Lando, and Rose took a seat. Chewie placed the pod containing Maz’s body on the table. Celly stood off to the side. The other Mandalorians, and the Wookies, all left the hall.

Chewie spoke first. He explained what they were looking for: an ancient star chart, showing the way to a planet called Mustafar. Lando filled them in on what had happened to the Resistance: the tracker, Holdo, Crait, Leia. Rose informed them of the whereabouts of Rey, Finn, and Demi, and the plan to meet up and attack the First Order base. Finally, Poe implored them, begged them, to join up with the Resistance, to increase their chances against the First Order.

The Wookie chieftains conferred. The Mandalore summoned Celly, and asked her a few questions in the ancient Mandalorian language. A Wookie was sent running, and returned a few minutes later with a worn-looking scroll. One of the Wookie chiefs laid it out on the table, and drew a line with their hand from Kashyyk to Mustafar. Chewie growled in acknowledgement.

Chewie then gestured over to Maz’s casket. The chiefs nodded. Chewie picked up the pod, and slung it back over his shoulders. The chiefs walked away, and Chewie followed them, down another set of stairs, all the way down to the base of the tree, and then a little further. The roots gave way to soil, and to a field. It was covered in saplings and in small trees that split into two branches about a metre up, which then reconverged further up into a single, twisting trunk. In the space between the split branches hung flat strips of bark with symbols carved into them. Chewie had been to places like this before. This was a Wookie graveyard.

The chieftains guided Chewie to an open plot, dug deep and wide to fit a Wookie body, a pile of dirt at its side. Chewie removed Maz’s pod from his shoulder, and placed it on the forest floor. It opened with a hiss, and he removed Maz’s body. He growled with sorrow at the sight of her. Maz, at least, looked to be at peace. Chewie placed her body in the grave, and began pushing the pile of dirt onto her. The Wookie chieftains watched on as he covered her body.

Chewie finished. The ground in front of him was now flat, fluffy with soft earth. A chieftain stepped up from behind him, and planted one of the saplings in the middle of the burial mound. The four Wookies stood a moment, in silence. Once the tree had grown, the chieftains would return, to add the hanging bark tag that identified the deceased. Now, they stood in silence over the grave of Maz Kanata.

 _Fwump. Fwump. Fwump._ Muffled booms echoed in the sky. Chewie looked up. Three First Order cruisers, including _The Supremacy._ The chieftains began to run back to the village. Chewie gazed up in shock, as panicked shouts erupted from the tree, and the First Order hung over Kashyyk like a raised blaster.


	10. Chapter 10

The rusting, ruined bulk of the second Death Star was visible from space, an unsightly lump warping the shape of the ocean moon of the planet Endor. It was not the entire space station. When the Death Star had exploded over the forest moon of the gas giant Endor, pieces had been catapulted across the entire solar system. The force of this explosion shifted the Death Star out of the forest moon’s orbit. Unfortunately for the ocean moon, a significant chunk of the ruined station had entered its orbit instead.

Kylo had touched down on a relatively flat plane of metal, jutting out from the ruins. He couldn’t tell what the metal had once been: maybe one of the Death Star’s protective outer plates? Waves crashed up against it, spraying Kylo Ren with foam. The ocean roiled around the Death Star, but the station itself appeared relatively stable.

“Up,” whispered the helmet at his hip. Its voice was clearer now, its power more noticeable. Kylo knew he was getting close.

He marched forward, up towards massive strips of metal rising perpendicular to the ocean like the ribs of a forgotten beached whale. As he got closer, he could see how the station used to look. Collapsed rooms appeared all over; a torture chamber, a mess hall, a prison cell, a medbay. Kylo could see both the ruins and what it had been before. He sensed the helmet at work. The Emperor was trying to show him what the station had been before it was destroyed. What the Empire had been before Darth Vader had betrayed it.

Kylo paused, and fell to his knees. He tried to close his eyes, but they were forced open. Stormtroopers marched past him, pushing captured Rebels towards their cells. A mouse droid zipped along behind them, cleaning up. He could hear Rebel screams coming from the torture chambers around him, and laughter coming from the mess hall opposite.

Kylo could feel the Dark Side of the Force. So strong, here. Emanating from the core of the Death Star like a heartbeat, dictating order, demanding strength. With each blink, his vision shifted from the memory of the Death Star, to the actuality of its ruin, and back again. Slowly, he became aware of a call. A signal, through the Force, wrapped in darkness. Some small section of the Death Star still thrummed with power, even now.

Kylo rose back to his feet. Ahead of him was a wall, another former hallway twisted vertically, pockmarked with warped metal that could be used as handholds. Kylo launched himself up, one handhold at a time, moving vast distances with each leap through the Force.

As he reached the top, he sensed something else. A pair of familiar presences. He turned, looking. But there was nobody there. Just Kylo, on the ruins of the Death Star, in the middle of a tumultuous ocean. He must have imagined their presence. A memory from his disappointing past, trying to weaken him as he got close to gaining true power.

The pulse from the Dark Side was ahead of him now, and a little below. A trio of navy cloaked Jawas noticed his presence, and scurried away quickly. Kylo considered tossing them off the platform into the ocean below, but by the time he’d thought it, they had already disappeared into another section of the station. On the horizon, an oceancrawler (a sandcrawler retrofitted for aquatic use) was moored by the edge of the ruins. How low the Empire had fallen. A memory written in scrap metal. History measured in the price of spare parts. Kylo scowled, and continued.

The top edge of the vertical hallway extended for a few metres, and ended in a drop. Kylo looked down into the pit below him. The support struts of a raised platform in a large room had collapsed, tossing the platform down and reshaping the whole section: abstract art built of warped metal columns and plates. Black wires extended down into the pit, like thick veins cut off at the end. Some were still sparking. After all this time, somehow the Death Star still generated electricity.

Kylo saw red cloaks in amongst the debris. He blinked, and the helmet flashed a memory. The Emperor’s guard, resplendent in red, guarding the doors to the Emperor’s chamber. A platform, raised above the dark heart of the Death Star itself. A bridge between elevator and platform, a staircase, and then, a throne. The Emperor’s throne. Kylo blinked again, and yet the throne remained. Collapse, half melted beyond recognition, but sitting on its side at the bottom of the pit.

The helmet directed him down, and Kylo leapt. He landed lightly on the ground below, his weight still causing metal to grind against metal below him. Ahead, between the red cloaks and the grid of warped steel, was the throne.

The world shifted with each blink. First, ruins. Spires of twisted metal. Groaning steel, the hiss of sea spray, sunlight shining down through the torn open roof. Then, Empire. A great sphere, hanging above a planet. The internal engine humming, then roaring, with Dark power. A metal platform above it all, on which rested a boxy, metal throne. And on the throne… A figure swathed in black. Beckoning to Kylo Ren.

Blink. Sunlight and sea spray. Blink. Shadows and order. Kylo walked towards the throne. By the time he reached it, he could not tell the difference between the two worlds.

Kylo clambered over the mound of scrap metal, or rose up the stairs, reached out, and touched the throne. Memories flashed, again. Kylo sat in the chair, in the darkness, looking out a window. He looked down on a green planet. He felt the core of the Death Star sing. A laser erupted from the station, cutting straight through to the core of the planet. Kylo watched as the planet exploded, chunks of it scattering across the solar system, much of it vaporised instantly.

He blinked, and now he looked down the stairs. A young man swung a blue lightsaber at a giant in all black. The giant’s red saber parried each blow, and the young man was on the back foot. Kylo blinked again, and now he was falling. Agony. Lightning coursed through his body, raking across his every nerve. He gazed up at the giant in black, and giant looked back down. Kylo blinked again, and saw the throne on its side, ruined by the weakness of one man.

Kylo _hated_ Darth Vader. He had never felt such hate. Now, he saw what his grandfather had thrown away. What a _single_ moment of weakness could do. Darth Vader was not someone Kylo had to live up to. Darth Vader was a coward to be forgotten.

There was more. Kylo felt something new in the Force. A pulse, just a few metres from him, buried under pieces of the collapsed Death Star. The helmet on his hip both pulled towards it and pulled away. Kylo Ren raised his hands. The Force wrapped around the metal covering the pulse. Kylo pulled his hand to the side, and the metal sprung away, crashing loudly to the ground.

Beneath the rubble was a black robe, an ocean of inky darkness in itself. Kylo suddenly stopped shifting between realities with each blink. Instead, the robe whispered to him. It whispered of power, of legacy, of restoration. It whispered in the Emperor’s voice, and in a thousand others. Kylo Ren felt the weight of the Dark Side rest upon his shoulders.

The voices grew louder as Kylo got closer. Whispers became chants, then shouts. He reached down, and touched the robes. The pulse still came from below. Kylo brushed the robes aside.

Beneath them was an ornate lightsaber. The weapon was still shining silver, wrapped in rings of gold and bronze. The voices roared. _Take it, take it, take it._ Kylo reached down, and wrapped his hand around the lightsaber.

Immediately, the voices stopped. Darth Vader’s ruined helmet stopped tugging at the Force. Kylo fell to his knees, nearly crumpling to the ground. Now, there was only a single voice, a single power. It flowed through the lightsaber, up through Kylo’s hand, then his arm, then out through his entire body. He felt his heart stop. He felt his mind take on new memories, new ideas, new possibilities. Kylo felt a second soul take residence in his body.

“Yes… Good,” said the Emperor, his creaking voice echoing in Kylo’s mind, as clear as his own internal dialogue. Kylo opened his eyes, and looked around. He was still Kylo, still in control of his body. He placed a hand on his chest, and realised his heart had not started beating again.

Kylo could see the Force. Not as a part of everything, a fabric weaving together the entire universe. Now, it was like air, something to be taken in, absorbed, and used. The ruins of the Death Star shimmered with potential energy.

Kylo felt something else, a pair of presences behind him.

“Now, Kylo. Avenge my death. Destroy the Jedi. Erase Vader’s failure,” said the Emperor. His voice boomed within Kylo. With each word, Kylo’s mind was cleared. He clenched his teeth. All that was in him now was anger, and hate, and a craving for vengeance.

Kylo Ren rose to his feet. His eyes bulged with fury. He held the Emperor’s lightsaber in his left hand, and drew his own into his right. The sky had clouded over, and rain began to pour on the ruins of the Death Star. Kylo turned around. Above him, standing on the ledge overlooking the throne room pit, stood Rey and Finn. 


	11. Chapter 11

Supreme Leader Hux stood in the engine hall, looking down at drops of blood that led to a maintenance hatch. The hatch that Kylo Ren had escaped through only an hour before. A hatch that led directly into the inhospitable nothingness of space. Behind him loomed Captain Phasma, and a very nervous First Order officer.

“He must be dead, sir. Supreme Leader, sir. There’s nothing out there to sustain him,” said the officer. Hux said nothing. He stared at the blood.

“… Of course, we’ve sent troops out to find the body, which we expect to have soon,” continued the officer.

“But you don’t,” said Hux. “You don’t have a body. Which means he isn’t dead. Check the ship logs. Check everything.”

“Sir, it’s simply not possible to survive out there, even with the helmet he took. It’s possible his body was dragged into the engines and destroyed.”

“Enough. Captain Phasma, relieve this Lieutenant of his duties immediately.”

Hux stormed out of the engine hall, and back towards the bridge. Behind him, he could hear the Lieutenant beg, shriek, and then go silent.

As Hux marched back to the bridge, _The Supremacy_ was alive with activity once again. Troopers sprinted through corridors. Officers barked orders. All of them, as Supreme Leader Hux passed, stopped what they were doing to bow. This was, of course, mandatory. Hux would not have his authority impugned for even a single moment.

The same thing happened as he entered the bridge. Every officer stopped what they were doing, rose from their seats, and bowed. Hux paid them no mind. It would only matter when they _weren’t_ being deferential.

The former Lieutenant Tariss stood at the window. Now, she was General Tariss, second in command to the talented, powerful Supreme Leader Hux. She had decided she quite liked her promotion. _The Supremacy_ was overlooking a little green moon, one that hung above a massive, red gas giant. This was Yavin 4, the one-time home of the Rebellion. Now, it hosted a number of small cities. _A perfect testing ground,_ thought Tariss. _Not large enough to cause problems, but big enough to be worth our time._ Supreme Leader Hux walked up beside her, and joined her in looking down on Yavin 4.

“An inspired choice, Sup-,” Tariss began, but Hux raised a finger to silence her. He continued to stare out the window in silence.

“Is it ready?” asked Hux. Tariss nodded.

“Activate it. Prepare the ground team for landing.”

“Y-yes, Supreme Leader. At once, Supreme Leader.”

Tariss turned on her heel, and walked into the centre of the bridge.

“Protocol 1-D is ready for activation. Lieutenant Korski, head to Hangar 23 and prepare the ground team for landing,” said General Tariss. Korski nodded, and sprinted out of the bridge.

“Hangar 6 has confirmed, General,” said a pilot at one of the many computer terminals.

“Good. Open Hangar 6 doors.”

“Door opening, General.”

“Extend the launch battery.”

“Battery extending, General.”

Down in Hangar 6, the massive gates had been opened. Now, the hangar was open to space, the internal atmosphere protected by a thin blue wall of light. Pilot troopers and engineers stood at terminals, frantically pressing buttons.

Hangar 6 had recently been retrofitted. Once filled with TIE Fighters, it was now home to row upon row of racks. These racks were attached to large motors, which allowed them to be extended out of the ship. The motors began to churn, and the racks slowly moved out through the blue veil of light, to hang over Yavin 4.

From the window, Hux could see the racks extending. They had a dozen hangars like this now, each retrofitted the same way. Now, it was time to test them.

The racks were home to hundreds of small, black orbs. These orbs popped off of the racks with a click, and began their descent down to the planet’s surface. They were comprised of two parts. The first: a small thruster, which would enable them to break through a planet’s atmosphere and arrive at a location with a high population density. Hux watched as a thousand black dots dropped from his ship and headed down to Yavin 4.

\---

Tatrum was a city that had, until recently, been a large village. Only in the last few years had enough people moved in to start making people seriously consider multi-level housing. Tatrum was still surrounded by farmland, and it was still small enough that everybody knew everybody.

It was lunchtime, and farmhands were out in drove, roaming amongst the street stalls looking for something to eat. Stall owners grilled skewers of meats and vegetables, and handed out bowls of boiling hot red soup in exchange for little diamond-shaped coins. From the windows of houses, people hung clothes out to dry. It was sunny, and warm, the last stretch of warmth before winter began to creep in.

Above the city, three First Order star destroyers warped in. The muffled booming sound of their entry barely registered with the people. Star destroyers had appeared over the city before. It used to be the Republic, then the Empire, and now the First Order. Villagers had lost interest in their comings and goings. Tatrum was a small city, unimportant in the grand scheme of galactic politics. The star destroyers never arrived for anyone or anything here.

Shortly after the arrival of the First Order, a strange shadow fell over Tatrum. It happened as the farmhands were eating, and the stall owners were cleaning up their wares. As they all looked up, it appeared that half the pixels in the sky had died. Hundreds of black dots had taken up residence, the blue sky still visible in the spaces between them. They were paired with a faint howl, which grew louder as the dots grew bigger in the sky.

Soon, the howl became clearer. It was the workings of thousands of small engines, and the sound of tearing atmosphere as the dots came closer and closer. People had started to gather, and chatter about what was happening. The dots came close enough that some began to identify them as little droids, orbs with a cylindrical rocket attached. The droids stopped in the air, fifty metres above the village. With a _click-hiss-thunk_ , they ejected their cylindrical rockets, which began to rain down on the village.

People began to panic. The cylinders rained down on the city, bouncing off tiled rooves, ripping through the canvas covering the stalls, and almost hitting people as they ducked under cover. People began to run all over, begging entry into some of the small houses, crowding each other for space under awnings, sliding underneath speeder bikes. The rain of metal cylinders lasted only moments. But in the panic, the villagers had not realised that the circular droids had descended onto the city.

The droids’ interiors snapped open, revealing a ring of sharp silver prongs. Red lights ringed their heads, and they spoke to one another in monotone, repetitive beeps. The villagers paused, and looked up at the swarm, as they now hovered at roof level, spreading out around the town. One villager began to raise a blaster. But it was too late. The droids activated, and each one zipped after a villager. There was screaming, crying, panicked running. Some villagers tried to strike the droids. Some villagers tripped, and fell, and curled into a ball. Some sprinted, as fast as they could, for the vast fields of farmland.

But the First Order’s droids were lightning fast. They chased villagers down, and latched onto their heads, metal prongs sinking into skin and bone and fastening themselves to the sides of their heads. The droids had several functions: entry into planetary atmospheres, identification of suitable humanoid hosts, host acquisition, and host control. Once latched, the droids extended a probe into the brains of the villagers.

As each villager was captured by a probe, they fell to the ground. The droids injected numbing agents, and powerful short-term anaesthetics, knocking each person out for just a moment. The probe extended through skull and into brain, and delivered a series of electric shocks. The process only took a couple of minutes.

When the villagers of Tatrum began to wake, their eyes were glazed over. The droids remained attached to the side of their heads. They did not look at each other, and did not speak to each other. The villagers simply moved, rigidly, still stiff from the anaesthetic, towards the cylinders littering the ground, and began to clean them up.

\---

Hux could not see exactly what was happening on the ground from up in _The Supremacy_. Chatter between stations flurried behind him.

“Droids are through the atmosphere.”

“Got it, generating a heat map of the local population now.”

“Population tracks to previous numbers, shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Ejecting entry jets now.”

“Ejected. Resistance?”

“None. They’re all standing around.”

“Idiots.”

“Preparing for droid activation.”

“Activated.”

A pause. Silence. Then, on a large panel on one of the back walls, green lights began to flicker on. Hundreds of lights, each attached to a small screen which began to flare with lines of information. The bridge erupted into applause. Pilots and engineers leapt out of their chairs, handing out hugs and high-fives between each other.

“Supreme Leader, we have contact from the ground,” said General Tariss. Hux nodded at her. Tariss flipped a switch, and a crackly voice echoed through the bridge in a strange monotone.

“I am Jasson, the mayor of Tatrum. The people of Tatrum await your next command, Supreme Leader,” said the voice. Tariss looked at Hux, nervous. This was everything he had wanted, which did not always guarantee a positive response. Hux smiled, turned on his heel, and walked out of the bridge.

“Prepare Protocol 1-D for the rest of the Yavin system,” said Hux.

Tariss exhaled. He was happy, then. Or less angry than usual. She supposed it didn’t matter which. She directed an engineer to come over and talk to the mayor. Tariss walked back over to the windows, and looked down at Yavin IV, over the barely visible city of Tatrum. The two star destroyers accompanying Hux’s flagship began to move, heading for different sides of the planet. From the sides of _The Supremacy,_ a dozen more racks began to extend.

\---

Once Hux left the bridge, he was unable to hide the smile on his face. To think, it only took two days without the pathetic Kylo Ren, and his plans were already falling into place. How easy would victory have been over the Resistance and over the galaxy if he’d done this sooner?

He turned off just before his sleeping quarters, into a small, circular room with a holographic map of the galaxy projected from the middle of it. To the side was a chair, chrome and blocky but with soft, red cushions. Hux sat down rigidly, his body a mirror of the stiff, angular seat. Opposite the door, standing against the far wall, were three figures.

The first was swathed in a black robe, with red trim and purple runes along the sleeves and hood. Second, was a short, nervous Rodian with a rumpled First Order officer’s uniform and round spectacles. Finally, a tall, wiry human, with a perfectly ironed officer’s uniform and an oily smirk.

Hux pointed at the Rodian. “Speak,” said Hux. The Rodian stepped forward nervously, and cleared his throat. He was an engineer, involved in Protocol 1-D, and responsible now for one of the many other parts of Protocol One.

“Um, yes sir, Supreme Commander, Supreme Leader I mean, sir,” began the engineer. “Protocol 1-D has begun successfully. As you predicted, and expected, and thought, sir, the Trade Federation droid minds mapped quite easily to human minds, and so it did, it is, it was quite easy to adjust the droids, and install the necessary integrative machinery, sir. And, um, the people of Yavin IV are moving to a central hub to begin construction of three new star destroyers, as you said, and planned, and said, sir, Supreme Leader, and obviously we’re producing more compliance droids as fast as-,”

“Good. And Kylo Ren?” asked Hux.

“Yes. Um. We did identify one TIE Fighter that did not return from its patrol of _The Supremacy_. Obviously, um, we tracked it, because we track all of our TIE Fighters, as you know, sir, and, we detected that the TIE Fighter ejection process was activated, but then the TIE Fighter kept moving, which suggests-.”

Hux glared at the Rodian, who winced and took a small step backwards.

“Sir, the TIE Fighter entered hyperspace and emerged in the Endor system.”

“So, would it be fair to say that Kylo Ren has decided to visit the Ewoks?” spat Hux.

“N-n-n-no Supreme Commander Leader sir! We tracked him to the ocean moon of Endor, which is the location of a significant section of Death Star II wreckage!” said the engineer.

“Would the ruins of the Death Star not be picked clean by now?”

“The Death Star still emits powerful Dark energy,” said the hooded figure, stepping forward. Their face was concealed, but they had a croaky, feminine voice. Hux could swear that each work they spoke was accompanied by whispers, somewhere, somehow behind the words, but he was never able to identify them further. The Rodian, terrified of the hooded figure but grateful for their interruption, stepped back and took a deep breath.

“You will speak when spoken to,” said Hux angrily. The occultist paid him no mind. They stared at the galactic map, and continued.

“Few dare to tread on the ruins, except the most daring or desperate scavengers. Some scrap metal might be missing, but the Emperor’s darkest secrets… I see no other place where he would keep them.” Hux scowled at them, for ignoring his command.

“Fine. So Kylo Ren is looking for some of the Emperor’s rubbish. That’s not why you’re here, witch,” said Hux. Hux’s troopers had found them while searching an ancient, barren planet, all dust and lightning. Exogul. An ancient Sith world, apparently. Hux cared only that it had been a dumping ground for captured Jedi lightsabers. Hux had been looking for an old temple. When Hux’s troops arrived, they found the occultist, who had immediately asked to see Hux. Hux almost had them killed on sight, but he decided against it. Again, the right choice. The witch was surprisingly useful.

The occultist turned to Hux. He could see their green eyes, glowing under the hood, and nothing else. His skin began to crawl. Thankfully, the occultist turned back to the map.

“Protocol 1-B is proceeding as ordered,” said the figure. “Captain Phasma was successfully restored using the recovered techniques used on the old Separatist General Grievous. We have continued to use the blueprints for Grievous and his Magnaguard for current projects.”

“Excellent. Do you have the necessary resources?”

“Exogul has what you sought.” The figure moved back to their spot against the back wall. Hux did not hear or see footsteps. Hux looked over to the final figure.

He stepped forward with long, elegant steps.

“Officer Malorden,” said Hux, nodding with respect. Malorden nodded back, and began. The officer had been a spy for the Republic, then a spy for the Separatists. A spy with the Empire. Then, with the Rebellion. Now, he was with the First Order. Hux had not ignored his history of betrayals, but he could not ignore his history of successful espionage either.

“The tracker on the body of Maz Kanata has been entirely successful. As expected, the Resistance have taken it with them, and led us to their location. Kashyyk. The Wookie Chewbacca seems to be seeking new allies. Poe Dameron also has a sister who now belongs to the Mandalorians, also located on Kashyyk,” said Malorden.

“Why was I not informed of the _sister_ earlier, Officer?”

“Our probe droids only recently identified the Mandalorians on Kashyyk, and this was corroborated with documents recovered from a number of their previous locations.”

Hux huffed. “And Poe Dameron is definitely with them?”

“We can speak to it with a 95% probability, yes sir.”

“Did you get what we needed from Yavin?”

“Of course, sir. Shuttle is on its way back now.”

Hux nodded, and Officer Malorden stepped back. The three supervisors of Protocol One stood in silence, and watched Hux. He put his arm on the armrest, chin in hand, and thought. Protocol One would inevitably be successful, but there were still decisions to be made.

“You. Engineer. Share the information on Kylo Ren with Officer Malorden. I expect little Kylo will run home to his ridiculous castle on Mustafar soon enough. Officer, keep track, and let me know when he does,” said Hux. The engineer nodded. Hux gestured for him to leave, and the engineer raced out of the room.

“You,” said Hux, looking at the witch. “Return to Exogul. Continue to oversee works.”

The occultist said nothing, and glided out of the room.

“Officer Malorden. Prepare a shuttle. We will head for Kashyyk at once.”

Malorden smiled, bowed, and left the room. Hux spent another moment sitting on the chair, pondering his options. He then rose, and headed for the bridge.

\---

Not long after Hux had given the order, and the works on Yavin IV had been completed, the First Order fleet appeared over the planet Kashyyk. No racks of compliance droids extended from their hulls. They hung over the planet in silence. Wookie guns trained their scopes on the warships, but they would do little to stop the First Order if they decided to attack. The Wookies’ defence against the First Order was secrecy. If they had been found, there was little else they could do.

A single shuttle exited from the body of _The Supremacy_. Supreme Leader Hux wanted to deliver his terms to the Resistance personally. With him was Captain Phasma, seated against the far wall and still nearly hitting her head on the roof. Officer Malorden stood behind the pilot, examining Kashyyk through the front window, his hands behind his back. A dozen deathtroopers joined them, in case of any ridiculous Resistance attempt at heroism.

The pilot tracked a single dot as they headed closer to the surface of Kashyyk. A tracker, placed on Maz Kanata’s body, which had worked exactly as Hux planned. The sentimentality of the Resistance was always going to be their downfall. As they grew closer, Hux noticed they were heading towards a large tree. As far as he could tell, there was nothing more there than leaves and bark. But the tracker pointed in this direction.

Officer Malordern pointed. Off to the side of the bulk of the tree, on what could easily be mistaken for a strange branch, was a roughly circular platform. On it were a number of Mandalorians and Wookies. Hux couldn’t tell if Poe Dameron or the Jedi girl were there. But it did seem like an excellent place to land. Hux directed the pilot, and they descended below the treeline.

The shuttle landed gently on the platform. Around it, blasters and bowcasters raised, Mandalorians and Wookies took cover behind crates and weapons lockers that had quickly been tossed town. When the First Order arrived, there hadn’t been much time to think. When no cannons had started firing, Poe suggested that Hux must have had something else in mind. By the time Chewie had sprinted back up into the village and found the rest of the group, the First Order shuttle was lazily drifting down towards them.

The door opened outward, and a ramp extended from the underside of the shuttle. A dozen deathtroopers rushed out, blasters raised, and set up in a semicircle around the open doorway. The Wookies eyed off the deathtroopers, who did not fire. Then came Officer Malorden, who exited the shuttle and stepped off to the side, hands still behind his back, a leer on his face.

Lando glanced over the crate he was crouched behind. He could swear he recognised that officer. Recognised him being captured by the Rebellion, and begging for pardon in exchange for information. Remembered him disappearing one day, when the Rebellion was becoming the New Republic, and some distant cells of the old Empire were reforming into something called the First Order. Lando readied his blaster. If nothing else, maybe he could deliver a quick hello to an old friend.

With slow, booming steps, the revitalised Captain Phasma stepped out of the shuttle. Her feet rung metallic on the ramp, and crunched the bark under her feet as she stepped off of it. She stood off to the other side of the ramp, opposite to Malorden. Rose gasped in horror.

“How is she still alive?” she asked, looking at Chewie. Chewie shrugged. He’d seen all sorts of Imperial riff-raff come back from the brink. Chewie had always figured you just kept shooting at them. Chewie growled this information back to Rose. She smiled.

“Next time we get her, we’ll make sure she doesn’t get back up,” said Rose.

Finally, Hux exited the shuttle. He walked into the middle of the semicircle of troopers, teeth clench, eyes blazing with a strange, furious passion.

“Resistance!” he began. “The star destroyers above this… tree… _will_ attack at my order. I have a single demand for you. Give me General Poe Dameron, and the rest of you will live! Deny me, and I will take him anyway, and destroy what remains of your petty militia.”

Poe immediately rose to his feet, and stepped out from behind cover. He dropped his blaster, and raised his hands into the air.

“You idiot,” mumbled Celine, reading her blaster to fire.

“Poe! What are you doing?” shouted Rose. Poe glanced back at her, keeping his hands raised.

“If Hux wants me, he can have me. I ain’t that important. There will always be someone to resist, Rose. Always somebody ready to take the next step,” said Poe, walking towards Hux. Hux gestured, and two of the deathtroopers raced over and grabbed his arms, pinning them behind his back. The crowd of Wookies, Mandalorians, and Resistance got nervous. Fingers got dangerously close to blaster triggers.

Rose sighed, and put down her blaster. He was right. A single General wasn’t worth the whole Resistance.

“Hold your fire!” shouted Rose.

“How’d you find us, anyway?” said Poe cordially, as the deathtroopers brought him up to Hux. Hux scowled.

“I put a tracker on your dead friend, Maz Kanata. I knew you couldn’t help but find her, and bring her with you. Pathetic,” said Hux, with a twisted grin. Poe smiled back.

“Ah. Caught us caring about people again. You really are a clever one, Huxy,” said Poe. He winked at Hux. Hux scowled, and gestured towards the shuttle. The deathtroopers dragged Poe inside.

“This is the end of the Resistance! If you remain here on Kashyyk, you will be permitted to live. If you do not, it will be taken as an act of war. I will execute your General, and then I will personally execute each of you,” said Hux. He turned, and made his way back inside the shuttle. Phasma, Malorden, and the rest of the trooper followed. The ramp receded, the door closed, and the First Order shuttle drifted back towards their fleet.

Rose gazed up as it disappeared. Her whole body shook. It didn’t even make sense. Why Poe? What were they going to do now? People began to exit from behind cover. Chatter started. Confused. Concerned. Could they really trust the First Order not to fire? Would they ever be safe again now the First Order knew their location?

Lando came over to Rose, and put a hand on her shoulder. She barely noticed. All she could do was stare upward, and watch the Resistance disappear into the clouds.


	12. Chapter 12

Rained poured down on the Emperor’s former throne room. Rey and Finn looked into the abyss, rain and shadow obscuring everything but Kylo Ren and a large, important-looking chair, trashed and tossed on its side. Kylo Ren now had two weapons drawn. His usual, volatile saber in his left hand, the Emperor’s blade in his right. The Emperor’s weapon was still shiny and chrome, somehow glimmering between the sheets of lashing rain. Finn and Rey’s hearts beat as one.

Rey and Finn drew their own weapons, and dropped down into the pit. They stood across from Kylo, the Emperor’s throne between them. Kylo began to circle it. Rey and Finn did the same. They moved clockwise around the throne, waiting and watching.

Kylo Ren’s eyes shone: Fury, fear, pain, madness, ambition. Rey wondered if she had ever really seen compassion in them. She wondered how she could have trusted him. She wondered how far further he had descended into darkness since they had first been connected by the Force. Rey dealt with a storm on two fronts: the howling rain, and the churning, vicious Force that radiated from Kylo.

Darkness surged from Kylo Ren, his own anger and fear mixed with something else. Some smell of ancient rot, the sound of furious screams and breaking things, an emptiness that could never be sufficiently filled with power. Rey had never felt anything like it. This was a spirit beyond redemption. It was not Kylo, dripping with shame and loathing. This was power twisted on itself, a need for dominance that drowned out everything else.

Finn could barely think. He’d only just connected to the Force. He didn’t realise how overwhelming it could all be. But he wasn’t as connected as Rey. He felt her recoil existentially, at whatever Kylo had become. Finn could sense something was wrong with Kylo, but he had other goals in mind. He had a lightsaber, and now he knew how to use it. Kylo Ren wouldn’t be hurting anyone again.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” said Rey. She took a step forward. Would Luke have been able to see light left in him? Would Han? Would Leia? Rey could not. But she couldn’t believe it wasn’t there.

“It is _always_ like this. And it _always_ will be.” Kylo Ren ignited the Emperor’s lightsaber. It erupted from the hilt, a hissing, controlled gash of red. He ignited his own saber; it crackled, volatile, but just as dangerous as the Emperor’s. Kylo was bathed in a horrible maroon light.

Rey stood her ground. Finn ignited Luke’s saber, and spun it in his hands. Kylo smiled, and nodded at Rey. Rey stared back at him, focused. She would not attack him first. Kylo Ren would still have a chance to redeem himself. Steam rose from the active sabers, rain instantly evaporating on impact with the immense heat.

Kylo lunged, leaping over the Emperor’s throne. He flew down towards Rey, and swung. Finn leapt in front of her, and parried Kylo. The force of the blow sent sparks of energy flying from the sabers, launched Finn back into the far war, and bounced Kylo back next to the throne. Kylo landed softly, and advanced again, twin lightsaber blades dragging along the floor.

Rey leapt to her feet, and swung overhead at Ren. He blocked her strike – easily – with the crossguard of his saber, and sliced at her side with the Emperor’s saber. Rey jumped back, the hissing red energy barely missing her middle. His movements were quick, quicker than was possible. He hadn’t moved like this on Starkiller base, or on the First Order superdestroyer. Rey could feel the power of the chrome saber, pulsing through Kylo Ren. Somehow, the Emperor’s power yet lived.

She noticed Kylo’s eyes. They had turned a sickly yellow. Rey also noticed Finn, racing up behind Kylo. Once again, she stepped up to Kylo Ren to strike.

The battle continued this way for some time. Rey and Finn would try to attack Kylo Ren all at once, and he would toss them aside and continue his pursuit of Rey. He moved too quickly, deflecting any blow they managed to land near him. Rey was getting tired. She could see Finn panting as he picked himself up from the wall again, and raced back towards Kylo. Again, Rey and Kylo faced each other with the throne between them.

This time, Rey ran early, before Finn had gotten back to his feet. She leapt into the air, and swung down at Kylo. He parried her attack easily. Rey pressed on, swinging both sides of her saber, landing as many blows as she could to try and force Kylo into a mistake. But each attack, he blocked. He barely looked as though he’d broken a sweat. The terrible determination in his yellow eyes remained.

Rey swung for his head as Finn raced up, aiming for his knees. But it was as though Kylo knew exactly what they were planning. He blocked the first, second, and third of Rey’s swing. As Finn extended his hand back to swing, Kylo swung back at him, blocking another of Rey’s attacks with the Emperor’s saber as the fizzing red blade of Kylo’s saber darted out in a blurring red arc. Kylo caught Finn at the wrist, and pulled through into Luke’s saber. Finn’s hand separated from his body, and he tumbled to the ground, momentum carrying him as Luke’s saber exploding into a cloud of silver shards.

Rey felt anger flare, and thrust the end of her saber for Kylo’s stomach. Again, he was too quick. He ducked under her strike, and then swung up at her as she followed through. The Emperor’s saber flashed up, and severed her arm, right at the shoulder. Flesh and bone provided no resistance against the heat of a lightsaber. Rey’s saber clattered to the floor. The stump at her arm hissed with heat, and glowed a dull red.

Kylo raised two fingers off of the Emperor’s saber, and tossed Rey across the throne room. She hit the ground hard, and rolled away into a crumpled heap.

Kylo turned his attention back to Finn. He had clambered back to his feet, and raised his left hand to Rey’s saber. It began to zip towards him, but Kylo raised another finger, and instead it redirected, scattering off amongst the scrap metal. Kylo swung his saber at Finn, who raised his hand and deflected it with the Force.

Finn stumbled back, away from Kylo. Kylo turned the Emperor’s saber towards Finn. He thrust forwards. Again, Finn raised his left hand, and tried to deflect the blade away. But it was as though the Force did not, or could not, exist around the Emperor’s weapon. Kylo’s attack continued, unabated.

Rey had scrambled to her knees, propping herself up with her remaining arm. She looked up as Finn stumbled. The red saber speared through Finn’s abdomen, and emerged with a low crackling sound out of his back. Finn gasped. The world went white, and then black.

Rey screamed. She could see their silhouettes, outlined in the rain. Finn’s silhouette; framed by the saber piercing it, the dim red light revealing his grimace of shock and pain. Kylo; holding one saber through Finn, the other dangling at his side, a sick smile under yellow eyes. Kylo dis-ignited the saber, and Finn dropped to his knees, then to the floor.

Tears burned at Rey’s eyes. She could still feel Finn’s heartbeat. It was weak, and growing weaker, stuttering with every second beat. She could see Kylo Ren turn to her, re-igniting the Emperor’s saber.

Rey felt it now. The smell of rot made sense to her. In her ears, screams and broken things echoed. Emptiness. Hatred. As Kylo made his way towards her, she felt it. Kylo Ren had betrayed her again and again. He had spent his life haunting the galaxy, trying to restore old orders and dead things, killing whatever had grown up through the cracks of the Empire’s ruin. Rey had escaped slavery on Jakku, and now he hunted her. Han, Luke, and Leia had all fought to end the Empire he fawned over, and Kylo Ren had punished them for it. Maz Kanata had opposed him, and she was gone too. Finn had escaped his army, and opposed his First Order, and now…

She felt hatred through the muscles in her left arm, into the ligaments of her hand, down to the nerves in her fingers. Kylo Ren continued forward, passing by the Emperor’s throne, sabers dragging on the ground once again. Carving their own little paths through the massive, all-encompassing tomb of the Empire. That’s all anyone was able to do. Until Kylo Ren came along.

Rey stared at Kylo. Han. Luke. Leia. Maz.

Finn.

She raised her hand.

Lightning arced out from the tips of her fingers. It lit the Emperor’s throne room, brighter than the sun, instantly evaporating the rain as it fell. It felt good. Her whole body felt electrified, awake, warm. The storm had disappeared. The darkness emanating from Kylo Ren was quashed. All that was left was Rey. She thought about how much she hated Kylo Ren, how much she missed those he had taken from her, and the lightning bolted from her fingers towards him.

It caught Kylo Ren in the chest, at first, and tossed him back. His sabers dis-ignited, but he managed to hold on to them both. He tumbled over backwards, and landed on one knee, with his other leg awkwardly stretched out to stabilise him.

Lightning arced towards him again. This time he managed to raise his sabers in time, igniting both weapons and crossing them over his chest, absorbing the lightning but pushing him back. He slide past the throne, past Finn’s body. Behind him, the wall of the throne room was open, leading to a cliff that dropped down into the ocean below. Slowly, Rey’s lightning pushed him towards it.

Kylo could do nothing. He called for the Emperor, shouted desperately inside his mind, to help him. But the Emperor had gone silent. The helmet at his hip sat, inert. He looked back at Rey, who was standing now, charging towards him, lightning still firing from her single arm.

Kylo could do nothing. Rey screamed, one last time, and pushed the lightning towards him. It arrived in a burst, which launched Kylo backwards, out of the throne room and down towards the ocean below.

Rey ran to the ledge, and looked down. The raging storm churned and tossed the ocean below. She couldn’t see Kylo Ren. Rey turned, and ran back to Finn.

The lightning had sapped what little energy she had. She collapsed to the ground beside him, and gingerly put his head in her lap. His eyes were closed. His heartbeat was faint.

“Rey,” said Finn. “I…”

“I know,” said Rey. She leant down, and kissed him with cold, wounded lips. Finn’s heart pulsed strongly, once, as he kissed her back. Then, his heartbeat grew fainter, more erratic, less frequent.

Outside of the throne room, Kylo Ren pulled himself out of the ocean. He stumbled, drenched, towards his ship, his two lightsabers somehow still in hand.

Rey sat with Finn’s head in her lap for some time. The storm did not let up. Lightning crackled above them, and rain howled on metal floor around them.

Rey could not tell how much time had passed when Finn’s heartbeat finally stopped. She sobbed, as the pair lay curled in the ruins of the Empire.


	13. Chapter 13

Rose sat in a little café, nestled within the tree city. It was a hollowed-out branch, with an interior larger than many buildings she’d ever seen built from steel and concrete. She would have been absolutely amazed with the size of this tree, and the ways the Wookies had carved it out into a city, if she wasn’t so devastated by the loss of Poe.

She’d called the rest of the fleet to land on Kashyyk, and Chewie had offered to lead them back through the woods to the city. The Mandalorians had returned to weapons training, to cleaning their armour, to chatting quietly in the corner of this café. The Wookies had also returned to normality. Rose couldn’t blame them. She supposed nothing really had changed for them. Staying here was there only option before, and it was their only option now.

Rose had ordered a coffee from the Wookie behind a counter. Their fur was streaked with grey, and they wore a pink apron with an image of a womp rat stirring a stew. The coffee smelled wonderful: strong, with a strong air of hazelnut. But Rose found her throat closed up. She couldn’t drink it. It sat in front of her, steam rising up to the roof.

Apart from the gaggle of Mandalorians chatting at one of the tables, the café was empty. Everyone from the Resistance had wandered off, aimlessly, after Poe had been taken. All except Chewie, who had immediately started moving. Rose wondered if he was used to this kind of thing. Chewie had always fought: the Separatists, the Empire, now the First Order. He never seemed to accept a loss, and eventually, it usually turned out he was right not to.

For a while, Rose stared at the wall. Her coffee began to grow cold. The Mandalorians got up and left. The Wookie barista disappeared into a back room. Rose was alone.

Until she felt a clap on her shoulder, and saw Lando slide into the seat across from her. He smiled at her. Rose thought she smiled back. She couldn’t be entirely sure, at this point.

“So, Poe’s gone,” said Lando. Rose blinked, stunned by the inane comment. She wanted to hit him. Did he think she hadn’t realised?

“Yeah.”

“Time to give up and go home, I guess!” Lando was grinning now. Rose figured she could get him with her left hand without knocking over the mug of coffee. She decided to glare at him instead.

“You’re angry” said Lando.

“Of course I’m angry! Poe just gave up! He just walked off with the First Order and left us here!”

“Yeah, he did. It was the right choice.”

“What?!”

“That man has been moping around since Leia died. I told him he needed to step up. You told him he needed to step up. Now, he finally did.”

Rose considered getting up to leave. Lando had officially lost his mind. Instead, she stayed. Lando leaned in a little closer.

“Listen. He volunteered himself to go straight into that hornet’s nest with Hux and whatever Phasma is now. He must’ve had a reason, right?” said Lando. He reached out and took Rose’s coffee, and took a long sip.

“Ah. Wookie coffee. Best in the galaxy. Can you believe they make it out of tree bark?”

Rose frowned at Lando. He shrugged.

“Anyway. Let’s lay out exactly what happened. You notice that Kylo Ren didn’t show up? Hux wasn’t in charge last time. Something’s changed.”

Rose hadn’t considered that. She was so angry at Poe, she could barely pay attention to anything else. Just Poe, and his stupid decision.

“He brought a man named Malorden with him. I remember him. Spied for every major military and political group in this galaxy, and probably a few other galaxies too. Turned on all of them, too. If Hux is trusting him as a right-hand man, he mustn’t have many options.”

Rose nodded. If Hux had lost Kylo Ren, maybe he was short on talent? Rose remembered that Poe had put their entire fleet in disarray by taking out a single communications tower. The First Order had been pressing onwards without repairs when Kylo was in charge. Hux wouldn’t have had time to fix his fleet. _Maybe the First Order_ is _vulnerable…_ thought Rose.

“Next thing. Hux had us dead to rights. His fleet over the planet where the only organised resistance against him was hiding. And he didn’t finish it. He took Poe, and only Poe, because it’s _personal_. He wants Poe to suffer. And Poe knows this very, very well.”

Lando reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a small, silver datapad. On it was a little red beacon, flashing, amongst a sea of co-ordinates. He placed it on the table.

“Poe had a tracker?” said Rose, incredulously.

“He sure did. Told me he had a hunch about why the First Order didn’t immediately fire. Seems he was right.”

“So we can follow them?”

“We sure can. They’re vulnerable, Rose. Hux is alone, he left us alive, and we know where he’s going. That means there’s still a chance.”

“But there’s still so many of them…”

“Hey, kid. Even if there was only one of us left, there’d still be a chance.” Lando took a moment to slurp down the rest of Rose’s coffee. He smacked his lips, and put the mug back on the table.

“That coffee sure is something. You really should’ve tried it. Anyway, it seems you have another guest,” said Lando, leaving the table. Rose looked behind her. Celine leant casually against the doorframe of the café.

“Come walk with me, Rose,” said Celine. She and Lando exchanged nods as Lando left the room. Rose grabbed the tracker off the table, and headed to the door.

They walked through the main thoroughfare of the city. It was growing dark outside, and people were beginning to finish their activities for the day and head on home. Hanging lanterns, woven from vines with bright fireflies trapped within, began to turn on all over. It was remarkably beautiful.

“It’s not a bad place to hide out,” said Celly, noticing Rose looking up at the lights. “Aesthetically, it’s killer, and the Wookies are lovely hosts. Still, I think we’d all prefer if we didn’t have to.”

“You have a plan?” asked Rose.

“No. But I think you will. And I want to help.”

“I thought the Mandalorians wanted to stay out of the Resistance.”

“They do. But they won’t, forever. Until then, I want to help you personally.”

Celine turned into another room off the main street, and Rose followed. It was dark inside. Rose could make out stacks upon stacks of crates. Celine made her way through the stacks. Left, right, left, left, right. Rose continued after her, a little perplexed.

Finally, Celine turned another corner, into a nook lit by a lantern on a small table. On the table was a box. Heavy-looking, black, but framed with gold and silver around the edges. It was protected by a formidable lock, but Celine produced a key.

“My brother is an idiot. But I want him to be alive to tell him that,” said Celine. “I know you’re going to go and find him, wherever he is and whatever has happened to him. From what Poe tells me, it’s what you do.”

Celine placed the key in the lock and turned it. The box clicked, a number of times, various metal bars sliding away from the lock until the box popped open slightly. Celine gestured to Rose. Rose moved closer to the box.

“The Mandalore is going to be angry about this when she finds out. But it’s just sitting here, and I imagine Lando Calrissian didn’t give you that datapad because he thought you needed an electronic to-do list.” Celine lifted the lid on the box. Rose stepped closer again, and looked inside.

The interior was purple velvet, and surprisingly empty. There was only a single object in the box. A silver rectangle, with pronounced edges and a pristine sheen. It was the hilt of a weapon. An elegant sword with the blade sawn off. A lightsaber.

Celine nodded to Rose, who took the weapon out of the case. It was lighter than Luke’s lightsaber, and felt alive in Rose’s hand.

“This was made by the first Mandalorian inducted into the Jedi Order, long ago. We call it the Darksaber. Go on, activate it,” said Celine.

Rose pressed the button on the hilt. Out of the top shot pure energy, black in colour with a shimmering white edge around it. The black was blacker than anything Rose had ever seen. Not just the absence of light, but as though light had never existed where the blade now shone.

“Celine… Thank you, but… I don’t know how to use one of these,” said Rose.

“There’s something about this weapon, Rose. It will help you. Especially when something, or someone, has been stolen from you. This weapon has been passed around for so long, by so many groups, so many people… Something about it seeks justice.”

“I can’t possibly take this, Celine.”

“You have to. Or I’ll beat you up.” Rose couldn’t tell if Celine was joking. Her voice was flat, her expression invisible behind her helmet.

Rose smiled. “All we need now is a plan.”

Suddenly, the datapad beeped. Poe’s location had changed. Rose’s commlink lit up at the same time. She pulled both out, placed the datapad on the table, and activated her commlink.

“Is this Rose? From the Resistance? Rose?” said a voice from the commlink. It was staticky, a weak connection, but Rose recognised Demi’s voice.

“Demi? What’s going on? Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Rose! Things are… it’s… it’s bad, Rose. Rey’s gone. And Finn…”

Rose looked at the datapad. Poe had moved to a location the datapad could not identify, but Rose recognised the co-ordinates. Mustafar. The First Order base.

“Demi, tell me everything.”


	14. Chapter 14

It had taken Demi a lot longer to climb the vertical hallway wall than Finn and Rey. They had leapt up, ledge to ledge, tossing themselves after Kylo Ren using the Force. Demi had no such assistance. She struggled. Slowly, she reached out for each handhold, wrapped her fingers around it, said a little prayer to any god that was watching, and pulled herself up. She stopped on each ledge: a doorframe, a slab of metal perpendicular to the wall that looked like a wave heading down, a hunk of metal that had speared through the hallway from another section of the Death Star.

D-O sat in bag on Demi’s back. He huddled under a waterproof flap, nervously peering out at the Death Star ruins as he and Demi rose higher and higher. He glanced up, as a TIE Fighter zoomed overhead, through the storm clouds and out of the planet’s atmosphere. D-O wasn’t entirely sure why he’d been brought along, but Demi had insisted that droids were perpetually valuable companions.

“Scared,” D-O had said.

“Yeah, uh… yeah. Welcome to the club, little guy,” Demi had responded.

This had been enough to convince the little droid to zip inside Demi’s backpack, and patiently wait while she climbed the wall.

Eventually, she reached the top. A storm had begun when she was halfway up the wall, making the journey even slower and more treacherous. The rain beat down on her as she looked around, desperate to find Rey and Finn. She could hear nothing but the relentless sound of water on metal. Demi looked around the upper platform, and eventually came upon a doorway leading to a pit full of scrap metal.

Down below, she could see two bodies. Finn and Rey, collapsed next to each other. Demi gasped. She clambered down as fast as she could, and raced over to them. It wasn’t good. They were both badly wounded. Demi crouched, and shook them both. Finn didn’t respond. She could see he was missing a hand, and had a horrible burn through his stomach.

Rey was missing an arm, but when Demi shook her, she breathed in sharply. Her breathing was shallow, but consistent. Demi looked around. She clearly needed medical assistance, but she didn’t like her odds of finding a doctor in a ruined space station. The pit had a hallway leading off the back of it. It was the only option. Demi slipped the backpack off her shoulders, placed it on the ground, and let D-O out. He rolled out, wheels skidding a little on the wet metal floor.

“Hey, bud, I need you to go and find a medical bay, or something like it, right now, okay?” said Demi. The droid stopped rolling around, and looked up at her.

“Yes!” said D-O, and zipped away towards the hallway. Demi hoped he knew what he was looking for. She turned back to Rey, and rummaged through her bag for the small medkit she’d brought with her.

D-O raced down the hallway, searching. He didn’t know what a medical bay looked like. He was confused by the warped layout of the Death Star, and scared of the strange shadows that the storm cast. But Demi had asked him nicely, just like Maz had. Maz had all sorts of broken-down droids in her house on Kajimi. If nothing else, D-O had worked out what a medical droid looked like.

Demi laid out the medkit beside Rey. The rain had not let up, and Demi struggled to keep water out of the little case. She removed a bacta salve, and applied it to Rey’s wounded shoulder. The bacta was a teal gel, and shimmered slightly as it began to work on the burn. Demi then took out a large syringe with a flat head. Rey’s breathing became stronger.

D-O ducked inside each room along the hall, looking for a medical droid. The hallway itself was small, and dark, seemingly not a major passage. The rooms were full of strange things that D-O had never seen before. Shelves filled with fragile, old books. Racks of trinkets: knives, necklaces, statues, and little pyramids glowing red. None of these things were medical droids.

At the end of the hallway, D-O came across what he wanted. In the centre of the room was a gurney, propped up at a 45 degree angle. The room was also filled with shelves. On these were mechanical body parts. Limbs and organs filled the room. Off to one corner, a medical droid sat inert, covered in a layer of dust. A 2-1B surgical droid. Maz had one of these, and had been playing around with its brain circuitry, frantically comparing it to some notes she had. She’d tried to explain the whole thing to D-O, but he didn’t really understand. Something about the bad guys, and using machines to make the good guys do what they wanted. Even Maz wasn’t sure what they were planning.

D-O had found his droid, and zoomed back towards Demi.

Demi had slowly lifted Rey onto her shoulders. If nothing else, she could try and get them out of the rain. She looked at Finn’s body, and decided to come back for it when she could. He deserved better than resting here.

She had entered the hallway when D-O had come racing back.

“Yes! Yes!” he shouted, zipping around in circles at her feet.

“Okay, okay, show the way,” said Demi. D-O turned around, and raced back to the end of the hallway. Demi followed slowly after him.

Demi looked around in shock at the room at the end of the hall. This wasn’t like any medbay she’d ever seen. There were no bacta tanks, no bandages or sedatives. Nothing that looked like it could actually heal people. But it did have, unexpectedly, exactly what Demi needed: spare limbs and a surgical droid. She laid Rey down on the gurney, and began searching the room for a suitable arm.

D-0 zipped over to the seated surgical droid. He opened a panel on its hip, and accessed its internal systems. Everything was functional, just powered down. He gave it a jolt, and its eyes flew open, electricity pulsing through all of its circuits. It stood to its feet, walked over to the gurney, and strapped Rey in.

“Hey!” shouted Demi, shoving the droid. It barely moved. The droid walked over to the shelving, and selected an arm. It was a protocol droid arm, without the shiny metal coat. Instead, a network of thin metal poles and wires was visible.

Demi realised that the droid intended to attach the arm to Rey. It moved over to her with the arm immediately, lining it up with her shoulder, flipping through the tools on its arm until it reached a welding torch. Demi ducked over to the other side of Rey, and quickly pulled out a syringe filled with sedative. It seemed the droid was going to perform the surgery regardless of Rey’s condition. Demi injected Rey with the serum, and watched her muscles unclench.

Demi wondered how the droid knew so immediately to re-attach an arm. She was unsure why it didn’t use any sedative, but she had to assume it knew what it was doing. The droid began to weld. Rey’s jaw clenched, though the rest of her body remained relaxed. Demi didn’t have enough sedative to make this process painless, but it was enough to at least make it tolerable.

The process didn’t take long. Sparks flew from the welding torch, fusing metal to flesh and bone, tying in networks of wires with networks of nerves. The droid switched tools several times, adjusting interior components of the arm, making sure it was synced up with the rest of Rey’s body. Eventually, the droid decided it was finished. It returned to the corner, and slumped to the ground once again.

Rey lay in the gurney, unmoving, in some semblance of sleep. Demi checked her over, applying more of the bacta salve to the site of her now-reforged arm. For a little while, Rey slept, and Demi sat down against another wall, D-O in her lap.

\---

When Rey eyes slipped open, she was at peace. She tumbled out sleep with a haze over her eyes. Above her, the roof was canvas, blown by the gentle morning breeze. Her bedroll was hard, but it was better than the floor. She felt no soreness in her muscles, though her limbs felt a little more like jelly than usual. The sun shone through the front flap of the tent. The air smelled of rusty metal. It was another morning on Jakku. Rey had only just found a new section of the AT-AT to scavenge, filled with parts that seemed to be functional. She’d be sorted for portions. All she had to do was get out of bed.

Rey woke in the ruins of the Death Star. She screamed. She remembered all of it now, memory hurtling towards her like a house tossed by a tornado. It crashed into her, exploding into sorrow, mourning, and rage. Her heartbeat was wrong; something half-missing.

Rey’s scream woke Demi, who had been dozing on the floor. She scrambled to her feet, D-O rolling off her legs in a panic. Rey’s face was contorted with agony. She strained against the straps on her arms and legs. Muscles tensed in her left arm, and pistons pumped furiously in her right. Demi stepped forward, to start removing the restraints.

She stopped when sparks began to fly out of Rey’s hands, both organic and mechanical. From her legs as well. Little bursts of lightning erupted from Rey’s body, lunging for the restraints, clashing against them with a hiss and leaving a cracked, black mark each time. Within seconds, the restraints were burnt black and fragile. Rey ripped her arms upwards, and the restraints burst into a cloud of ash. She did the same with the restraints around her ankles. Rey stepped down off the angled gurney, chest heaving, some sparks of lightning still jumping off of her.

“Rey…” began Demi. Rey did not acknowledge her. She raised her organic hand, paused for a moment. Demi could hear the sound of rushing air from the hallway, and then, the thud of Rey’s lightsaber hitting her palm. Rey paused for a moment, holding the weapon out in front of her, a scowl still etched on her face. Then, she walked. Down the hallway, and out of Demi’s line of sight. Demi rushed to follow her, but when she made it back to the ruined throne room, Rey was gone.

Demi sighed. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to happen here, but it definitely wasn’t this. Finn’s body still lay in the rain. The Resistance would be devastated. Finn gone, Rey gone, Kylo Ren still on the loose. She began to practice what she’d say to Rose, or Poe, or whoever she could get on a commlink when she made it back to her ship.

Demi crouched down next to Finn, and picked him up. He was heavy, but Demi had spent a lot of time in the weight room back when she’d been with the First Order. The rain continued to pour down, the clouds unwillingly to shift away from the husk of the Death Star.

She had no idea how she was going to carry Finn down the sheer cliff she’d used to get up here. Thankfully, D-O answered the question for her. He raced in from the hallway, excitedly, running laps around Demi’s ankles.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” he shouted, then returned to the hallway. Demi follow him, confused.

Somehow, D-O had found and activated an old service elevator. It was cramped, and the lights flickered on and off, but Demi didn’t have a better plan. She crossed her fingers as the door closed, and closed her eyes as the elevator raced down to the bottom floor.

Demi and D-O exited near the vertical hallway that they had used to climb up to the throne room. Demi thanked the droid, who immediately zipped off and began scanning the rooms attached to the hallway. Soon, he returned, shouting “Yes!” again. Demi followed.

D-O had discovered an actual medbay, not the strange surgical chamber adjacent to the throne room. It was filled with beds and supplies, but most importantly, there were a few portable bacta tanks housed against the far wall. Demi hustled over, her arms aching from carrying Finn. The bacta tanks were white cylinders, with pale blue glass covering the top. D-O activated one of the tanks, and it slipped away from the wall and bobbed over to Demi, its top section open. Demi gently placed Finn’s body in the tank, and pressed a button on its side to close it. She took a deep breath, and shook out her arms.

Demi and D-O made their way back to the ships, the bacta tank hovering along behind them. When they arrived, Demi attached the bacta tank to the bottom of her TIE Fighter. Magnets fired from the bottom of the Fighter, and the bacta tank zipped up towards it and locked on tight. Demi picked up D-O, clambered into the upper hatch of the ship, and immediately began calling on every Resistance frequency she could access.

It took some time. The connection was bad here, and the rain beat down relentlessly. Eventually, Demi connected. It was Rose’s commlink, she thought. She hoped it was.

“Is this Rose? From the Resistance? Rose?” said Demi. The voice from the other side came back in bursts.

“Demi? What’s going on? Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Rose! Things are… it’s… it’s bad, Rose. Rey’s gone. And Finn…”

“Demi, tell me everything.”

“Well… We made it to Ahch-To okay… Went to a temple there, where apparently Luke Sky- wait… hold on a second.”

Demi stared, wide-eyed, out the front window of her TIE Fighter. Ahead, Rey dragged herself up from the scrap metal cliff bordering the ocean next to where the ships had landed. She had come from the direction of the water beneath the throne room. Even through the storm, Demi could see the throne room, and the gaping hole ripped through its side that led down to the water. Demi dropped the commlink, opened the hatch, and shouted for Rey as Rey made her way to the ships.

“Rey! Hey!” shouted Demi. As Rey got closer, Demi could see that her expression had not improved. She still scowled. Her eyes still brimmed with fury.

“Where is Kylo Ren?”

“I… I don’t know! He flew away, earlier, while you were unconscious.”

Rey immediately dropped into a seated position. She closed her eyes, and her breathing began to slow.

“Rey…” Demi began. They had to talk about Finn. They had to talk about their next plans. But Rey sat in silence, meditating in the rain.

It had only taken Rey a few moments to find him, a beacon blaring across the galaxy, made all the brighter by how much she wanted to snuff it out. She had seen lava weaving its way across a coal-black plain of rock. A great castle rose above it, built over a waterfall of lava, made of jagged edges and dark energy. Rey’s eyes flew open. She run to the X-Wing, leapt into the cockpit as it opened, and began to rise into the air.

Demi ducked back inside her TIE Fighter, and closed the hatch.

“Rose, I’ll explain as much as I can,” said Demi, flipping switches and pressing buttons until her Fighter rose into the air as well. Rey had begun to fly, heading out of the planet’s atmosphere.

Rose could hear engines firing up. “What’s happening?” she asked.

“I think Rey knows where Kylo Ren is, and I think I’m going to have to follow her.”

“You found Kylo Ren?”

Demi began to explain everything, as she followed closely after the X-Wing. She explained Ahch-To, and the lightsaber, and then their immediate trip to the ruins of the Death Star. There wasn’t much she could say about the battle, only that Kylo Ren was there before them, and then things had taken an awful turn. Demi mentioned Rey’s arm. She paused before mentioning Finn. On the other end of the line, Rose went silent.

“He’s dead?” she asked.

“He’s dead,” said Demi. “And now Rey is… Something is wrong with her, Rose.” As Demi spoke, she could see the X-Wing enter hyperspace. Demi only had a split second to follow her. She lined up the X-Wing, and pulled the lever that activated hyperspace travel. As Rey entered, so did Demi, dangerously close behind, moving at thousands of times the speed of light with only a few centimetres of buffer space between the two ships. Hyperspace trailing was something First Order recruits only learnt about in theory, as a means to understand how enemies could and couldn’t be tracked. Trailing was filed in the “couldn’t” pile. But Demi had always thought it was possible. She was about to find out.

When Rey’s ship exited hyperspace, Demi yanked back on the joystick harder than she ever had before. She stopped, millimetres from the X-Wing’s engines, the flames from the exhaust licking up on the TIE Fighter’s window. Demi exhaled. Rey made her way down, down to the obsidian landing pad next to a large, ominous castle. Demi looked around. Lava. Rock. Ash. And above it all, three First Order star destroyers, leering down at it all.

“Uh, Rose, you there?” asked Demi. Rose confirmed. Demi explained the situation. Rose told Demi to stay safe, and then raced off to find Lando and Chewie.

\---

On Kashyyk, Rose had convened Lando, Chewie, the Wookies, and the Mandalorians in the meeting chamber once again. She explained the situation on the ocean moon of Endor. When she told them what had happened to Finn, everyone paused. She continued, her heart stuck in her throat. Both Kylo Ren and Supreme Leader Hux were on Mustafar, and seemingly at odds with one another. Kylo Ren’s ship was on a landing pad attached to the castle, while the First Order fleet hovered above it, apparently ready to strike.

“So, we attack?” said Lando.

“I don’t think so,” said Rose. “Something fishy is happening here. We need more information.”

That’s how she ended up in an A-Wing, borrowed from one of the few remaining ships in the Resistance fleet. She rose up towards the stars, alone, on her way to Mustafar.

“Will the Wookies help us? The Mandalorians?” asked Rose, as she’d put on her helmet and climbed the first stair into the ship.

“They will. I’ll convince them,” said Lando with a cocky grin. Rose smiled back.

“You have to. When the time comes, we’re going to need every ship we can get.”

Chewie growled, and reached out to hug Rose. Rose hugged him back.

“How confident are you?” asked Lando.

“Me? All I have to do is go to Mustafar, waltz through a First Order civil war, find a way to get inside _The Supremacy_ , find Poe, get Poe out, find Rey and Demi, get _them_ out, and then find all of us a way back here. I’d say extremely confident.”

Lando laughed, and Rose climbed into the ship. Above Kashyyk, she set her co-ordinates for Mustafar. On her commlink, she could hear chatter from the ground, as the Resistance set up housing and training facilities near the Wookie city. As she entered hyperspace, and the stars around her spread out and elongated like ink running down a page, the voices disappeared, and she was alone.


	15. Chapter 15

Poe had been tossed into a dark room, with his hands cuffed behind his back. He’d been marched through a dozen identical, chrome hallways, by a dozen identical, white stormtroopers. This was _The Supremacy_ , but other than that, Poe had no idea where he was, or what Hux wanted with him.

It felt like they were in hyperspace. Pilot’s intuition. There were no windows in Poe’s room, but he felt a slight shift in gravity and time. He’d flown his X-Wing enough to feel changes in the space around him intimately. Poe could feel the tracker in his internal jacket pocket, its corner jabbing him in the ribs. He hoped it was working. When they’d brought him onto the shuttle, he was shocked they hadn’t searched him. They didn’t even take his blaster until the shuttle had touched down on _The Supremacy_.

Poe waited for some time. He focused on the red light at the door. It was the only light in the room, and it was only bright enough to barely light the buttons on the control panel around it. He stared at the light, and tried to work out what Hux was planning. Clearly, there had been a split between Hux and Kylo Ren. Poe hadn’t been taken immediately to a torture chamber, nor had he immediately been questioned. He didn’t know the First Order to be merciful Strange, is what it was.

The light blinked green, and the door hissed open. Poe was blinded by the light from the hallway. A silhouette entered the room, thin and stiff. Poe’s eyes didn’t need to adjust for him to know it was Hux.

“Hello there, Huxy,” said Poe, squinting against the bright light. Hux entered the room, and the door shut behind him. A dull light turned on, revealing Hux’s twisted grin.

“Poe Dameron. General of the Resistance. So easy to capture. But the Resistance has always been weak,” said Hux. He maintained his grin, and kept his hands behind his back. Poe had never seen him so smug, and Hux was _always_ smug.

“Yeah, well, take these cuffs off and we’ll see who’s weak-.”

“ _Silence,_ ” said Hux, sharply, cutting Poe off. “As you may have noticed, Kylo Ren is no longer Supreme Leader of the First Order. I am in charge of the First Order now. I am Supreme Leader Hux, and I-.”

“Are you gonna do the bad guy thing where you explain exactly what your plan is and why you’re doing it?” interrupted Poe. For a second, Hux’s smile slipped back into his more traditional scowl.

“I _am_.” Hux paced closer to Poe.

“Now then. My plan is… Is… My plan…” Hux trailed off, frustrated. “Ugh.” Hux rolled his eyes. He stormed back over to the door, and banged his fist on it a few times. “Lieutenant, send them in!”

The door hissed open again. Hux stood off to the side, smile back on his face. Poe was once again blinded by the light. In the door walked two figures, silhouettes of a man and a woman.

The door closed, and Poe’s eyes adjusted to the duller light of the room. He blinked a few times, and opened his eyes wide. Then, he gasped softly.

“Mum? Dad?” he asked. In front of him, Hux grinning maliciously off to the side, were his parents. They wore their usual clothing: overalls and boots, the most basic kind, covered in pockets to store things in while they worked their farm on Yavin IV. Their eyes were glazed over. Little red domes with flashing red lights had fastened themselves to the sides of their heads. 

“What has he done to you?” asked Poe. Anger boiled within him. Part of him was just glad Celine had run off and joined some mercenaries before all of this started.

“We have willingly joined the First Order,” said Poe’s mother, her voice subdued and monotone.

“We renounce all our ties to the former Rebellion and the current Resistance,” said his father, his voice the same as Poe’s mother’s.

“You have disappointed us, son.”

“Supreme Leader Hux is twice the man you will ever be.”

At this, Hux started cackling. Poe gazed at his parents in shock. This wasn’t them. Wasn’t their voices, or their thoughts. But Hux had somehow hijacked their bodies.

“Isn’t this fun?!” asked Hux.

“How is this possible…?” said Poe.

“The galaxy is desperate to become part of the divine, pure, glorious First Order,” said his mother.

“No,” responded Poe. Poe’s parents hated the Empire. Hated the First Order. They were the fiercest, noblest people Poe had ever met. To turn them into puppets like this… It was inconceivable. Unforgiveable.

“Compliance will be had. That’s what I wanted to show you,” said Hux. “It doesn’t matter what you do now, Poe. It doesn’t matter what clever words you have to say, or what mockery you have to offer. The galaxy will belong to the First Order. It will all belong to me.”

Hux banged his fist on the door again. It opened, and Poe’s parents walked out. Poe started to say something, desperate to find anything he could say to wake them up. But he knew it was no use. Whatever device Hux had strapped to their heads was doing the talking for them now. Poe chose to stare down at the ground instead.

Hux walked up to Poe, grabbed him by the hair, and forced Poe to look up at him. Poe noticed he looked tired. He smiled his twisted smile, but there were bags under his bloodshot eyes. Poe smiled back.

“You only bring me up here for a family reunion?” asked Poe, in as friendly a tone as he could manage. Tears burned the back of his eyes. But Hux had brought his parents here to torture him. Poe refused to let him see that he’d succeeded.

“I wanted you to see that I’d won.”

“But you haven’t won. The Resistance is out there. They’re gonna come for you.”

Hux laughed, and yanked Poe’s hair, tossing him onto his side. Poe hit the ground with a thud, and slowly pushed himself back up. Hux paced back over to the door.

“I expect so! Why else do you think I left them alive?” asked Hux. Poe had managed to shift himself back onto his knees. Hux turned around again, walked over to Poe, and reached into his jacket pocket. He pulled out the tracker, and tossed it to the floor in front of Poe. Poe groaned. Hux laughed. Then, Hux turned and knocked on the door a final time. It opened, and Poe was again blinded.

“I could have destroyed the Resistance, the Wookies, _and_ the Mandalorians on Kashyyk. But it wouldn’t have been enough. I want them to come. I want to punish them for _thinking_ they can stop me. They will come for you, Poe, and I will crush them. I will crush them, and you will watch. You’ll watch as the whole galaxy joins the First Order, like your parents. And then I’ll crush you. I’ll crush you last, so you know I’ve won before you die.” With that, Hux marched out of the cell.

Poe was left in darkness. Over time, he felt the ship exit hyperspace. He heard running footsteps in the hall. Eventually, he felt the ship shake, as its giant cannons erupted. Poe hung his head. The blinking red light of the tracker flashed in front of him, a mockery of his plans. He thought about the Resistance, and hoped they wouldn’t come.


	16. Chapter 16

Darth Vader’s castle rose above the cooled lava plains of Mustafar ominously, a monument to darkness. It was all black, with tinted blood-red windows, and lay entrenched above a waterfall of lava. Here, Darth Vader had stored dark artefacts, studied them, and grown more powerful. He had trained his Inquisitors here. Prisoners of war had been stored in its many chambers. The castle was a rabbit warren, full of rotten things.

Deep within the castle, below the training halls and prison cells, below the libraries and the tombs, below the river of lava that flowed into the waterfall, was one more chamber. Vader had not designed this. It was added on the orders of the Emperor.

It was a vast cavern, split up by rivers of lava and bridges of gold covered in soot. In the middle, the bridges converged onto a golden platform, on which rested a golden dais. The dais was simple; a rectangular block, rising a metre above the platform, with an indent in the top. The indent was shallow, and shaped very specifically. It would only fit a particular object, and nothing else.

The golden platform backed on to a wall of obsidian. This wall was perfectly flat, and the obsidian was clear as glass. As Kylo Ren descended a set of golden stairs onto the golden platform, he could see himself reflected in the obsidian. The wall was roughly twice as tall as he was, and he felt as though his reflection called to him.

Kylo Ren ignored the call. He was here on more important business. In his ear, the Emperor whispered. The directions were clear. Kylo Ren was moments away from everything he’d ever wanted.

Kylo tossed his hooded cape off to one side of the platform. He unclipped Vader’s helmet, and tossed it unceremoniously onto the robe. The Emperor did not need to speak through it any longer. The Emperor was pleased as he turned, and made his way to the podium.

Rey entered the chamber from the staircase opposite to Kylo Ren. She looked down, and saw him approaching the podium. Her eyes flared. Lightning jumped from her skin.

Vader’s castle had been empty, save for Kylo Ren. She’d had followed him down, watching him through the Force, chasing the darkness that radiated from him. Part of her mind had nagged at her, warning her. The further into the castle she travelled, the darker things became. But her rage outscreamed the cautious part of her mind. It didn’t matter where Kylo Ren ran to. She would find him. And now, she had.

Rey raced down the golden stairs towards the podium.

\---

Rose exited hyperspace, and was immediately stunned. She’d never seen a planet like Mustafar before. It seemed so hostile. Some planets were inhospitable, or barren, but she’d never been to a planet that she felt intentionally didn’t want her there. She couldn’t tell if it was the smoke that drifted across the entire surface, or the lava that heated the cockpit even from this distance, but there was something horrible about Mustafar.

In the distance, she could see a castle. A spire of jagged black, somehow even less inviting than the rest of the planet’s surface. She assumed this was the First Order base that Maz had told them about.

Above the castle, a little way off to the side, were the three First Order star destroyers. They loomed over the castle patiently, their cannons not firing. Rose couldn’t tell why. _The Supremacy_ hovered slightly ahead of the other two. Rose looked down at the tracker. Poe’s red light flashed somewhere in the middle of the ship. She’d made it to Mustafar. Now she had to find her way onto _The Supremacy_.

“Demi, you out there?” asked Rose. She steered her A-Wing towards _The Supremacy_.

There wasn’t a whole lot to her A-Wing fighter. It was a ship designed for scouting. Quick. Quiet. But it wasn’t designed for a huge, sustained firefight. The Resistance used them in combat because it’s what they had, but the A-Wing didn’t hold up like an X-Wing or Y-Wing. Rose would have a better chance finding Poe in the A-Wing, assuming the First Order was too distracted to send the fleet after her.

“Rose! I’m here. Followed Rey down to the castle, but she disappeared again. What’s the plan?” said Demi.

“How long have the First Order been here?” asked Rose.

“Not sure. As long as I have been.”

“And Kylo?”

“There’s a destroyed TIE Fighter on the castle landing pad, but I haven’t seen him.”

“Hm. Not our problem,” said Rose. “Demi, Poe is on _The Supremacy_. Any idea how we can get on board?”

Demi whistled. “Nothing easy, but in theory… Any of the docking bays could have their shields down. We could go in through there, fight off the bay crew, and sneak inside?”

“How big are the bay crews?”

“On _The Supremacy_? I don’t know if they’re fully crewed… But uh… A thousand?”

“ _One thousand?”_

“Yeah. It’d be a big fight.”

“There has to be a better way.”

Demi thought on it for a moment.

“Well… It’s still risky.”

“Demi. Tell me.”

\---

Below was the castle. Kylo’s little plaything. He’d run off here with his Knights of Ren and with Snoke, to play make-believe with his little Sith trinkets while Hux did the actual work of running the First Order. Hux sneered down at it from his window on the bridge of _The Supremacy_.

His team stood behind him, waiting for their orders. General Tariss, Officer Malorden, and the engineer. Tariss and Malorden stood stock-still, hands behind their backs, faces impassive. The engineer rubbed his hands together anxiously, looking around the room, desperate for Hux to start talking so he could get off the bridge and back to the cluttered workshops where he felt more comfortable.

“Begin,” said Hux. Officer Malorden stepped forward.

“We have detected a number of small ships entering the atmosphere of Mustafar, sir,” said Malorden. Hux huffed.

“Unimportant. Resistance spies and scouts. We wanted them to find us,” said Hux. Darth Vader’s castle rose up and mocked Supreme Leader Hux. Kylo Ren had been given an _entire castle_ by Snoke. Hux had been given nothing. He had _taken_ everything he had. That’s why Kylo Ren would lose. He never had to fight like Hux did.

Malorden nodded, and stepped back to position. The engineer took a tiny step forward.

“S-s-sir, Supreme Leader, Supreme Ruler! Leader! Sir. The cannons are ready. They have been overcharged, and should be able to destroy the castle,” said the engineer.

“Should?” asked Hux icily.

“Will! Sir! Will be able to!”

“Hm. Good.” The engineer stepped back gratefully, and shrunk a little further into himself. General Tariss stepped forward.

“I have contacted the occultist, sir. They will inform us when Kylo Ren has completed his plan, and we will be able to attack,” said Tariss.

“Excellent. Take control of _The Vengeance,_ Tariss. You will order the attack from there,” said Hux. _The Vengeance_ was one of the other star destroyers hovering over Mustafar, part of Hux’s depleted fleet. He smiled. The First Order would not be depleted of ships, or weapons, or soldiers for long.

Tariss nodded, turned crisply, and marched out of the bridge. Hux tossed a hand backwards, gesturing to Malorden and the engineer. Malorden turned, and followed Tariss in the same, stiff fashion. The engineer scurried out after them.

Hux did not know what Kylo was planning. But he knew it didn’t matter. He would wait until Kylo had finished, to ensure that whatever he was working on would be completely destroyed in the attack. And then Hux would win.

\---

Thousands of simultaneous whispers echoed like a roar. Kylo was almost knocked over by the sound in his mind. The Emperor spoke: “Place the saber on the podium Kylo, and you will have the power you seek”. But as Kylo stepped closer, the whispers grew in number and volume. They seemed to come from the obsidian wall behind him. He caught snippets of each voice, a word or a phrase. Some encouraged him. Some admonished. Some mourned for him, and some mourned those he had hurt. It was almost unbearable. Almost. Kylo fell to one knee as he reached the podium.

He removed the Emperor’s saber from his belt. There was a band of obsidian on the saber he hadn’t noticed before, just below the emitter, that now seemed to overshadow the rest of the gold and chrome.

Rey heard the whispers too. It was quiet, for her. A few voices, much clearer, much more uniformly sad. They missed her. Rey recognised the obsidian wall as a larger version of the one she had found on Ahch-To. But her focus wasn’t on the voices, or on that wall. She ran down the stairs, directly towards Kylo Ren. As she ran, she slipped her lightsaber off her belt, and ignited it.

It took all of Kylo’s strength to raise his hand. The Emperor’s saber hovered, just below the top of the podium. He felt the saber pulling itself towards the indent. The whispers didn’t stop. The Emperor’s voice struggled to be heard over them. Kylo only sensed Rey’s saber a second before it swung down at him. He twisted his body around, ignited the Emperor’s saber, and stopped Rey’s strike centimetres from the side of his head.

Kylo rolled back, and up to his feet. Rey kept coming after him. He noticed her restored arm, and the fury in her eyes. He was almost impressed. She’d managed to come for him much more quickly than he’d expected. Kylo thought he’d left her in the ruins of the Death Star to die. If she’d lived, he figured she’d be gone for some time.

The Force was torn to pieces between them, their shared anger tearing away at the threads of the universe. Kylo blocked Rey again, knocking her back, and slipped his own saber from his belt. He ignited it. With both his sabers active, Rey didn’t stand a chance. She had no help, this time. Kylo smiled.

But then he noticed the lightning jumping from her skin. He crossed his sabers as she raised her hand, and blue lightning leapt from her fingertips once again. The force of the lighting pushed Kylo back to the edge of the platform. His heels dipped over the edge, the lava bubbling up for him from below.

“THE PODIUM!” shouted the Emperor’s voice, momentarily drowning out the whispers. Kylo dropped to his knees, ducking under Rey’s lightning. The lightning flew past him, and crashed against the wall behind him, blowing away a chunk of rock. Kylo rolled forward, and back to his feet. He raised two fingers towards Rey, and pushed her back with the Force. She crashed down at the front of the stairs.

Kylo rushed over to the podium. Again, as he drew close, the whispers almost brought him to his knees. But this time, he fought through. He disignited the Emperor’s saber, and reached his hand for the podium. His senses flared again. Kylo raised his other saber upwards, as Rey flew down from above with her saber extended. The force of her blow pressed down on his saber, and pushed him back into the podium. She glared at him, teeth bared, and pressed down on his saber with her own. The fizzing energy was millimetres from Kylo’s face.

Kylo kicked Rey in the knee, dropping her to the ground. He twisted his saber, and knocked Rey’s blade out of her hands. Kylo reached out behind him with the Emperor’s saber. It guided him towards the indentation. As he grew closer, the saber leapt out of his hands, and into the podium. It fit the indentation perfectly.

Kylo turned towards the podium, and stepped back. He stood opposite to Rey, as they stared at the Emperor’s saber.

Shadows began leaking from the saber. They twisted and coiled through the air, down to the ground, where they began to swirl around one another. The shadows piled on top of each other like woven rope, growing taller and taller.

Eventually, they formed a figure. A black robe covering a hooded figure. The shadows continued to leak out of the saber. Kylo and Rey could see yellow eyes below the hood of the robe. A wave of darkness erupted from the shadows, silencing the voices whispering from the wall.

Kylo knew this figure from the memories the saber had given him. Rey knew them from their power, the way the Force was corrupted around them. The Emperor had returned.

\---

“Can you guarantee the exhaust vents aren’t active?” asked Rose. The exhaust vents. That is what Demi had recommended. When they weren’t heated to hundreds of degrees from a process used to clean the engines, or to thousands of degrees when flushing excess heat from the engines actually firing, they were a reasonable means to sneak in or out of a star destroyer.

“No, uh, definitely not. They can run the cleaning process while they fire the cannons. And they only recently left hyperspace, so in terms of residual heat…” said Demi. Demi honestly wasn’t sure whether the vents were a better choice than trying to fight a thousand stormtroopers in a ship bay.

“What are you saying, Demi?”

“It’s doable. I think the odds are they’re currently cool enough to move through. But it won’t be comfortable.”

“It never is. Where are you?”

“Coming up to you now.” Outside her window, Rose saw the brightly coloured TIE Fighter rising from behind a rocky valley near the castle. She knew the First Order had noticed them, and likely identified who they were. Rose hoped that the First Order civil war would be enough of a distraction.

Demi joined Rose, and they began to move alongside the great bulk of _The Supremacy_. Rose had never spent the time thinking specifically about how big a star destroyer was. How many stormtroopers and officers were needed to run them. How many TIE Fighters waited deep within its many halls. How many cannons bristled along its muted grey exterior.

When a star destroyer arrived on a planet, it blotted out the sun. It was a symbol and a threat, one that consumed the whole sky. It was terrifying, because it heralded death and destruction. But up close, it was terrifying for a different reason. Rose thought about the number of people it took to make death and destruction happen. She thought about how many it had taken to construct it. Shipyards needed to build it, and designers needed to design it, and whole legions of scientists and engineers needed to build each armament. Then, thousands more scurrying around inside, the day-to-day work of violence. Thousands of individuals, each doing the small work of a mortal life, each contributing eventually to a behemoth embodying that death and destruction.

Rose remembered Canto Bight. The money that flowed through the research, and the design, and the construction. The First Order was her target, now, but she knew they were not the ultimate enemy.

Demi stared at _The Supremacy_ as it flew along beside them for similar reasons. But where Rose turned to anger, Demi felt only horror. She had an intimate knowledge of the function of a star destroyer. The regimented lives of the crews that kept it in operation. The stories about things hidden on them that the rank-and-file soldiers and pilots knew nothing about.

Demi had been a recruit, near the end of her training, when Starkiller base had fired. They hadn’t told the recruits until they’d been sworn in to the First Order. Funny enough, that meeting, where the papers were signed, and then the military brief was given, was the first time Demi had realised what the First Order was. Before that, on the small backwater base where Demi had been trained to fly a TIE Fighter, she was just happy to be in the air. Her dream of becoming a pilot was coming true.

She didn’t realise the First Order wiped planets off the map. Swallowed suns with a button press, and melted entire populations with another. She’d never heard of Kylo Ren, and Supreme Leader Snoke was spoken of as a benevolent bringer of democracy. The Empire was taught in history books as ambitious, ultimately flawed, and entirely in the past. She’d never heard of the Force. Hell, she’d never aimed a blaster at anything other than a mannequin, and she’d only done it to get the basic certification needed to spend more time flying.

Demi thought she would be fighting tyrant kings and despot drug lords. But then, she heard about Starkiller. She found out what the First Order really was. She pulled the tracking equipment out of her fighter before a mission, and then faked a crash. Then, she found the Resistance. They welcomed all the help they could get.

Now, Demi had seen the Death Star. The size of it. The scale. Its wreckage alone was the largest structure she’d ever seen. She’d seen what Kylo Ren could do, and wanted to do, with the same power that created the star destroyer and the Death Star and Starkiller Base. Not the Force. But the lust for power.

No more. Demi grew more confident by the minute, as they flew closer to the engines. The First Order _would_ fall. She and Rose would make sure of it.

They came to the aft end of _The Supremacy_. Demi looked up, and smiled. The exhaust vents were inactive.

\---

Rey knelt a few metres in front of the podium. Kylo Ren had stumbled back, and collapsed onto his knees as well. In front of them, the Emperor had been reborn in a network of twisting, winding shadows. He took a slow step forward, testing his new form. Rey could see his sickly yellow eyes glowing under the hood of his robe.

The Emperor crossed the platform, over to the obsidian wall. Rey and Kylo did not move. They were stunned. The room felt thick with the Force; a bloated, swollen version that dimmed the mind and dulled the senses. Rey felt as though the gold in the room had turned a shade darker.

The Emperor reached the wall, and Rey stood to face him. Kylo turned his head, but remained on his knees. The Emperor turned to face them.

“I have brought you both here to restore what was lost,” said the Emperor. “For too long, the galaxy has been out of balance. Chaos has ruled. The power of the Force, the _order_ of the Force, has disappeared from hearts and minds.”

Rey took a stuttering step forward. Her lightsaber was held limply, but she tightened her grip. Kylo remained on his knees, enthralled.

“Snoke never knew how to use you, Kylo. He failed to sense your ambition. But I still have my doubts. You have not proven yourself strong enough, or bold enough, to join me controlling the galaxy.”

“When I sensed Rey, sensed her power on the lonely planet of Jakku, I called on the Force. I paired you both, together. Both of you needed to compete to hone your power. I brought you together to see who was more fit to rule: The boy, with his historic lineage and burning ambition, or the girl, with her painful, lonely upbringing on a distant desert world? Now, the question will be answered.”

Rey took another step forward. It was difficult, as though the Emperor’s presence on its own was repelling her. Sparks began to leap up and down her arms once again. She heard the Emperor, but she didn’t care. He was in the way of her destroying Kylo Ren. He would be destroyed too.

The Emperor raised his arms. On either side of him, behind the obsidian wall, a figure appeared, walking up to the wall as though they had been waiting on the other side. Rey stopped. The figure was familiar.

“This is what victory offers. This is what _power_ brings. To change the shape of reality. To write the world in your image.”

Kylo’s realised who the figure was on his side of the wall. A behemoth of black metal, with a long cape down his back. Ominous. Terrifying. Kylo Ren could hear his slow, mechanical breathing. At his belt, Kylo could see his saber.

“Kylo Ren. To lead the Sith will be to lead _all_ the Sith. This chamber can restore life. You can bring back the Sith of old, under your command. Grievous. Maul. Dooku. Vader.”

Darth Vader stood behind the obsidian wall. Kylo leapt to his feat and ran to the wall, falling to one knee in deference in front of him.

“Grandson,” he said, gesturing towards Kylo. “I have been expecting you.”

Tears burned Rey’s eyes as she looked at the figure on her side of the wall.

“Rey. To lead the Sith will be to restore what you have lost. Those who have died because you were too weak to save them. You will never be so weak again. Your parents will return. Han, Luke, and Leia. Finn.”

Finn stood behind the wall. Tears ran down his face. He reached out for Rey, and she ran. The swollen Force could not hold her back. She reached the wall, and reached for him. His hand extended through the glass, little black shards reaching out into his hand to mark the border between Finn and the wall. Rey took his hand.

“Rey, please, please help me. Please get me out of here,” said Finn, tears still running down his face.

“I will. Finn, I… I’m sorry.”

“Please help me, Rey. I’m scared.”

Something nagged at the back of Rey’s mind. Her heart beat quickly at the sight of Finn. But there was still something missing.

“This power cannot be shared. Kill the other, take this power, and become my apprentice. Then, we shall restore order across the galaxy,” said the Emperor. He disappeared into a cloud of shadows, and reappeared by the podium.

Rey turned to Kylo. Kylo turned to Rey. The Force had burst around them, no longer pressing down on them. It was now boiling, burning, a hurricane of energy waiting to be tapped. They locked eyes, and hatred burned through them both. The Emperor cackled. Rey ignited her saber, and Kylo his. The figures behind the wall had grown silent.

Both warriors crouched, ready to lunge at each other. But at the same time, they felt something else. Another presence.

Kylo’s cape had slipped off of the helmet of Darth Vader. Wisps of white smoke rose up from its fractured eyes, forming another figure. A Force ghost, one that neither Rey nor Kylo had seen before. He was young, and boyishly good looking. There was a scar over his eye. He wore the robes of the Jedi during the Republic.

The Emperor hissed angrily. The ghost of Anakin Skywalker flashed a daring grin back at him. Kylo and Rey had never met him before, but they knew him by the way the Force wove itself around him. Their anger that had warped the Force had paused. For a moment, balance had been restored.

\---

The occultist’s voice crackled through the commlink on the bridge of _The Supremacy_.

“Kylo Ren has restored the Emperor.”

Hux smiled. He had been perplexed by Kylo Ren’s visit to the ruins of the Death Star. But his return to the castle had made things clear. The occultist knew many things about the Emperor, and had told Hux they doubted his death. Clearly, Kylo Ren had too. Hux would make sure of it, now.

“Concentrate all weapons on the castle.”

\---

Rose hovered her A-Wing just under the vent. She had popped the roof open, and was now standing, reaching up towards the access door to one of the exhaust vents. One of her feet was on the pilot’s chair, and the other was on the wing. Her balance was shaky. She desperately looked around for some kind of control panel.

“I can bring D-O up there, see if he can help?” asked Demi. Demi’s X-Wing hovered next to the A-Wing. Rose could see Demi peering out of the front window, offering encouragement.

“No it’s… Okay… I just need… How do these things normally open?” said Rose.

“From the inside,” said Demi. Rose frowned. She supposed the door would only be open if the vent was active, and that would be worse.

Rose blinked, and suddenly remembered the weapon on her belt. She removed it, held it away from her, and pressed the button. The void-black blade fizzed out from the hilt. Rose heard Demi gasp through the commlink.

“What is _that?_ ” asked Demi.

“A gift from the Mandalorians,” said Rose.

Slowly, Rose reached up with the sword. She didn’t feel comfortable with it. A weapon that could just as easily hurt the wielder as the enemy was a ridiculous weapon. Seemed the kind of thing only an ancient cult would come up with. But Rose was glad Celly gave it to her. Even dangerous cult weapons had their uses.

The fizzing white tip of the sword sliced through the side of the door like it wasn’t there. Rose slowly drew it across the entire door, cutting a square chunk out of it. When she finished, the door fell outwards, down past Rose and the A-Wing and towards the surface of Mustafar.

“Good luck in there,” said Demi. Rose turned and nodded to her. She deactivated the saber, and reattached it to her belt. She grabbed the rung of a ladder inside the exhaust port, and pulled herself up inside _The Supremacy_.

\---

Rey and Kylo stood, weapons drawn, but no longer facing each other. They had turned towards Anakin Skywalker, as he paced across the platform. Anakin stopped in the middle, between the Emperor, and Rey and Kylo.

The Emperor’s eyes burned bright yellow. He raised a hand, veiled in shadows. Lightning arced from his fingertips towards Anakin. But Anakin raised his own hand, and the lightning dissolved harmlessly in his palm. He smiled again, and turned towards the obsidian wall.

“This is what the Emperor does,” said Anakin. “He makes you think you want something, and then shows himself to be the only person who can offer it.”

Anakin moved up closer to the wall. He spent a moment looking at Finn, and then another looking at Darth Vader.

“He sent me visions. Whispers. That everything I loved would be lost. That everyone around me was a traitor. He stoked fear, and hatred. And then, when that fear and hatred led me to lose what I loved and betray what was left… It destroyed me. The Emperor hollowed me out, and rebuilt me as Darth Vader.”

“No!” shouted the Emperor. “Do not listen to him. He was weak! He could have restored what was lost, but he broke in the final moment. Anakin Skywalker was weak. Darth Vader was strong, until the ghost of Anakin cut him down. Destroy Vader’s helmet! Destroy the last remnant of his cowardice and I will give you the power to rewrite history!”

Anakin smiled, but remained focused on Rey and Kylo.

“The Emperor, and the Empire, must be destroyed. For good, this time. If he isn’t, people like you will keep being used. If the Emperor lives, then he will continue to seek pain and turn it power for himself. ”

Anakin turned to Rey.

“You know that’s not the real Finn behind the glass. The Emperor cannot restore his life. But he can give you a copy, enough to manipulate you into doing his bidding. Death is the Emperor’s weapon. He kills indiscriminately, with the promise it can be undone if you just kill a little more. You will find catharsis one day, Rey. But not here. Not with him.”

He then turned to Kylo.

“Darth Vader was never powerful, and the Skywalker name is not one you have to live up to. There is no redemption for you. Not after what you’ve done. You have killed hundreds of innocents yourself, and billions more with the weapons of the First Order. I know how that feels, what that is. You can never redeem yourself, but you have to try.”

Rey felt her fury dissipating. It didn’t disappear, but it was numbed. Anakin’s words, and the gentleness of the Force around him, helped her see some reason. She’d had known that the Finn behind the obsidian wall wasn’t real. She felt it in her heartbeat. But it was close, close enough that it could take away some of the pain, close enough that she would have done almost anything to have it.

Kylo felt years of hatred loosen in his mind. He had wanted to be powerful. He had wanted a legacy. He had followed Luke Skywalker for it, and Darth Vader for it, and Supreme Leader Snoke for it. Now, he thought about following the ancient Emperor for it. But each effort he made, each new time he sought power, he failed. Kylo only ever felt weaker. The whispers of the wall had reminded him of the cost of this weakness. Billions dead. Billions more wounded, and hurt. Kylo had never forgotten this. But he had tried so desperately to ignore it. For nothing. To do the bidding of men who sought more violence. No more.

The Emperor felt it too. He felt his grip loosening. He hissed, and raised both of his hands.

“If both of you are too cowardly to do what must be done, you will be destroyed. Order _will_ be restored,” said the Emperor. He closed both of his fists. The obsidian wall began to shake and crackle, a sound like boots stepping on glass echoing throughout the chamber.

Rey turned to the wall. Finn’s hand reached out for her now, but it was no longer so gentle. Now, it curled into an angry fist. The rest of Finn’s body began to exit the wall. Rey stumbled back, and realised that this version of Finn was made entirely of shards of obsidian glass. He wore an expression of pure hatred. Rey continued moving backward. Within moments, Finn had exited through the wall. In his right hand, he held a lightsaber.

“I loved you,” Finn hissed. He ignited his lightsaber. Out shot a blade of bright green.

On the other wall, Kylo Ren saw the same thing. Darth Vader made his way through the glass.

“You have disappointed me, grandson,” said Vader. He ignited his own lightsaber, and his armour was illuminated in blue.

Finn struck, and Rey blocked. She danced backwards as he continued forward with relentless, rapid blows. He fought nothing like Finn. Finn was just as likely to throw a kick as he was to use his saber. He was tricky, and creative. The obsidian Finn just struck, again and again, pure fury.

Rey missed him terribly. But the more he struck, the more she realised this wasn’t him. The Emperor offered her nothing. The pain from his death still lived within her. But she had to let him go. Accept that he was gone. Work on destroying what had killed him.

Finn’s aggressive strikes were easily deflected. Rey started striking back, and Finn’s doppelganger struggled to block them. Now, he was on the back foot.

Vader fought exactly how Kylo had expected. He was powerful, and methodical. Each strike seemed perfectly placed to knock Kylo off balance, to wrong foot him, and to leave another part of him vulnerable.

But Kylo had never seen Darth Vader fight. He had only heard stories of how powerful and methodical he was. Each blow by the obsidian Vader was telegraphed, and obvious. He hit Kylo in the same pattern each time. There was never a new strike, never a dash of creativity. Vader was rote, and mechanical. The attacks Kylo had thought he would use. Had dreamed of using himself. But now he realised how much that thought was missing of the actual thing. The memory was completely rigid, and unmalleable. Kylo danced around Vader, and forced him to block instead.

Rey swung hard at Finn, and Finn suddenly ducked under. He rolled away, towards Kylo, and swung up at his flank. Kylo turned from Vader, and blocked Finn.

Rey ran towards them, and Vader swung at her instead. Now, Finn pushed Kylo back with his aggression, and Vader knocked Rey off balance with his precision.

Rey quickly caught on to Vader’s repetitive attacks. Here he was, the avatar of the Empire, the thing that had brought the galaxy to its knees. Rey could see how her life led back through Vader’s: they shared a history on a desert world. Vader’s actions, as Anakin Skywalker and then as a Sith Lord, had pulled the galaxy apart, and led to the Empire and then the First Order. It had led to slavery on Jakku. It had led to Finn being kidnapped and turned into a soldier, and then to his being killed by an acolyte of Vader’s darkness. Finn’s life was tied to Vader’s, as was his death. One could not go without the other. If Rey tried to revive Finn, it would only lead to more deaths like his.

Rey was far quicker than the obsidian Vader. She darted around his attacks, and started to push him back towards Kylo and Finn with her own.

Kylo was overwhelmed by the speed and fury of Finn’s assault. He had fought Finn several times, and it was never like this. But as he blocked, and parried, and dodged, he realised that Finn’s aggression was just as rote as Vader’s precision. He always attacked, which meant Kylo could anticipate and manipulate him. Soon, the obsidian Finn was on the back foot.

Kylo saw himself in this false Finn’s assault. He was always attacking, always aggressive. Always manipulated. As he struck back, he breathed deep. He paused. He feinted. Where he would normally strike, he allowed Finn to strike instead. Parrying led to greater opportunity. In this clarity, Kylo saw himself for what he was. A weapon, that had been used by those able to direct his aggression.

Soon, Finn rolled under one of his blows, and struck back at Rey. Kylo turned to face Vader, who had returned to assault him. Kylo ducked beneath a high, horizontal swing from Vader. He swung his own lightsaber up, cutting through Vader’s wrist in the process. His hand separated from his arm, and exploded into a cloud of obsidian dust. Kylo landed on one knee, twisted his body, and swung his saber through Vader’s middle. Severed horizontally, his whole body burst into shards of glass, tumbling down onto the platform below with a cacophonous ringing.

Rey parried Finn, and kicked him in the knee. She spun on her heel, and caught Finn in the shoulder as he reeled back. She pulled through, her saber cutting him from shoulder to hip. Rey looked in his eyes, and saw only black glass. Nothing of the real Finn. The false Finn collapsed into obsidian, shattering down against the floor.

Rey and Kylo breathed heavily. Anakin sat off to the side, on the warped helmet of Vader. The Emperor stood in front of the podium, his hands hidden in his robes.

Kylo turned to Rey, and she nodded once again. They made their way towards the Emperor. His hand shot out of his robe, and lightning zipped towards Kylo. But Rey stepped in front of him, and caught it in her hand. The lightning ran through her body, and then disappeared harmlessly into the floor.

The Emperor put his hands up pleadingly instead.

“Kylo Ren, no, no, do not do this. You’re being fooled by the Jedi. By weakness. Do you not seek strength? Do you not see? I am the only one who can help you,” begged the Emperor. Kylo took him by the shoulder, and tossed him to the side. He collapsed in a heap on the floor.

“Do it,” said Rey. Kylo stood in front of the podium. He raised his own saber above the Emperor’s lightsaber, and plunged down. His blade cut the saber in two, and burned straight down through the podium.

The Emperor shrieked. His body began to wisp away, tiny shadows rising from him up toward the roof of the cavern. He tried to crawl away from Kylo, crawling towards Anakin. The Emperor fell to his side, hissing, babbling about power. He raised his hand, and some lightning sparked at his fingertips, then disappeared harmlessly.

The Emperor continued crawling, but the more and more shadow rose from him. Soon, he collapsed again. The final shadows rose up. Where he lay, there was now nothing. His lightsaber bubbled in the destroyed podium. The Emperor was gone. Rey and Kylo took a deep breath. The Force around them felt stable. Anakin smiled at them both.

Above them, the castle began to shake. Pebbles and rocks fell from the roof. Supreme Leader Hux had begun his assault.

“There is still one more enemy to face,” said Anakin. “Another remnant of the Empire to be eliminated. You will not find redemption or catharsis in defeating the First Order. But you must try anyway.”

With that, Anakin Skywalker dissolved back into nothingness. Kylo looked at Rey. Rey looked back, and nodded. They ran, up the stairs, up through the crumbling castle, and out to their ships.

The Emperor’s cavern collapsed as Vader’s castle fell on top of it. Lava flows burst through the walls. Obsidian glass shattered, and golden metal warped. The last whisper of Emperor Palpatine was crushed beneath falling rock.

\---

Rose slowly pulled herself up each rung of the ladder. They were still hot. The whole tube was hot, and Rose began to sweat the second she entered. The wind blowing up from the surface of Mustafar wasn’t any cooler. Rose was lucky she was wearing gloves.

At the top of the chute, there was a panel that allowed her to open the interior door. She pressed it, and the door slid open with a quiet hiss. Rose hoped that nobody had heard it.

She poked her head out of the chute, and looked around. The engine hall was loud, the sound of idling engines overwhelming. But it seemed empty.

Rose pulled herself out of the chute, and rushed over to duck behind some barrels of fuel. As she ran, she noticed dried blood on the floor, only half-cleaned off. The exhaust port door behind her hissed closed. Rose peeked over the barrels, and considered her next move.

\---

Demi waited on the landing pad by Poe’s X-Wing. She didn’t know what else to do. Rose had gone radio silent once she was on _The Supremacy_. She hadn’t heard from Rey since she’d flown off from the Death Star ruins. Demi had tried contacting Chewie or Lando, but the First Order were blocking communications from the ground. The second Rey and Rose were out, she’d head for the Resistance, to tell them what happened.

Soon after she landed, _The Supremacy_ and the other First Order star destroyers started firing on the castle. Chunks of towers and parapets began to crash down on the other side of the landing pad. Thankfully, Demi could still see that the staircase that led down into the bowels of Vader’s castle. Rey still had a chance.

As the highest parapet of Vader’s castle crumbled, Demi saw Rey run up. She popped her head out of the open port of her TIE Fighter, and shouted, encouraging Rey to hurry. Rey looked calmer than Demi had last seen her, even as she ran out of a collapsing castle.

Demi had crouched back down, and was beginning to fire up her TIE Fighter when she saw Kylo Ren exit the ruins behind Rey. He didn’t have a weapon drawn, and Rey didn’t seem concerned about him. Still. Demi’s TIE Fighter was already aimed at the entrance to the castle. Rey had moved out of her line, heading for the X-Wing. If Demi fired know, she’d be able to hit Kylo Ren, and bury him along with the rest of his relics.

But Demi didn’t fire. She didn’t know why, at the time. Maybe it was the way Kylo ran so frantically, so vulnerably, behind Rey. Maybe it was the way Rey seemed so unsurprised by his presence. Maybe it was just that Demi wouldn’t pull the trigger on somebody who hadn’t pulled the trigger on her first.

Demi was glad she didn’t, when Rey jumped in the front seat of Poe’s X-Wing and Kylo jumped in the back. Confused, but glad. She gunned her TIE Fighter, up out of the growing cloud of smoke and dust from Vader’s castle, up past the First Order fleet, and out into the atmosphere.

Rey followed Demi up. She and Kylo looked back at the castle as it imploded in on itself, sustained cannon fire finally weakening the interior until it collapsed. Rey hoped that the Emperor would be buried down there forever. Kylo remembered all of the artefacts he had stored, all of the terrible Sith knowledge, and knew there was no destroying it all. Someday it would be brought back to life.

“Demi! Demi, do you have a plan?” asked Rey on the commlink. Co-ordinates immediately appeared on the computer in front of Rey. The second Demi had passed the range of First Order communication blockers, she had radioed for Kashyyk. They sent her back co-ordinates in a nearby system.

“We’re rendezvousing with the Resistance. We just need to wait for Rose to get Poe. Are you bringing Kylo Ren with you?” said Demi incredulously.

“Uh, yeah, I am. He’s gonna help us stop the First Order.”

“You sure about that?”

“No, not really, but we need him.”

As they spoke, the First Order fleet turned towards the sky. They began to leave the atmosphere of Mustafar, leaving a plume of smoke where Vader’s castle once stood. Its broken rooms and demolished halls began to be swallowed by the river of lava that now flowed three.

Demi frantically called Rose on her commlink, but received no response. She watched helplessly as the First Order fleet entered hyperspace, and disappeared from her vision in a flash. She was too far away to trail them. Rose had taken Poe’s beacon.

“She’ll be okay, Demi,” said Rey. It didn’t make Demi feel any better. Helplessly, reluctantly, she put in the co-ordinates for the rendezvous with the Resistance.


	17. Chapter 17

Rose hustled out from behind the fuel barrels. She had spent some time waiting, looking around, getting the flow of the room. There were a few engineers pacing around with datapads, checking on various panels. A few droids worked on a fuel line. At her feet, a mouse droid had zipped around cleaning. The droid paid her no mind. Organics were just organics, and the mouse droid cared only for the elimination of dirt.

An engineer had just passed her, checking a series of barrels to her left. Rose assumed the barrels she hid behind would be next, and figured that she wouldn’t be on the inventory the engineer was checking. When the engineer turned their back, she raced over to a nearby door, and opened it.

It opened into a hallway. Rose would soon discover, as she snuck through silver rooms and nervously searched consoles looking for prison cells, that the First Order’s most prodigious production was not fleets of TIE Fighters, or legions of stormtroopers, or the proliferous cannons bristling on the exterior of _The Supremacy_. It was in the flood of hallways that filled the interior. Hallways leading onto other hallways, hallways leading to corridors, some corridors leading to hallways, a passage or two, and occasionally a room that inevitably branched out into another hallway.

The hallways were necessary to organise the vast number of different rooms and halls that Rose passed through. Many were understandable: mess halls, kitchens, bunks, and armouries. There were vast shooting ranges, and Rose even passed by a hall that simulated combat in a forest setting. She passed the many cargo holds and ship bays that housed the First Order fleet and kept their army fed.

Some were strange. Rooms filled with small, black orbs, thousands of them, with barely any room to move between the racks. Surgical gurneys in rooms filled with arms. A room that was just wall to wall shelves of human organs. Rose couldn’t tell why the First Order would have any need for them, but that wasn’t her main problem right now.

No prison cells, though. Poe’s beacon continued to flash, but he could be on any level of the ship. She quickly hacked in to a control panel, and revealed a map of the star destroyer. She was near the prison cells. Problem was, the only way down was via elevator, and she had no way to get inside an elevator without raising suspicions.

Thankfully, she was near a dormitory. Rose peeked around the corner, and saw a trooper sleeping soundly on a bottom bunk, their armour piled on top of a chest at the foot of the bed. She leapt inside the room, just as two stormtroopers rounded the corner. Rose pressed herself against the wall next to the door, and waited for the troopers to pass.

“What do you think the nature of love is?” asked one trooper to the other.

“What?”

“Like, what do you think _love_ is.”

“That’s not really our concern right now. We’re on patrol.”

“We’re patrolling the corridors of our own ship! We’re the only ones here.”

“Protocol demands silence unless pertinent communication is required… Besides… Love is irrelevant even if we weren’t on patrol. You know all deployed First Order troops must remain celibate, anyway.”

“Right, but like, c’mon… There’s more to love than that! Beside, nobody _actually_ does the whole celibacy thing.”

“I do. Are you implying you don’t follow the ascribed regulations, trooper?”

“Uh, no, no, I follow them. I follow. Voluntarily celibate, right here, actually. I was joking.”

The other trooper did not respond. They swept past the dormitory without looking in, and continued on down the hallway. Rose breathed a sigh of relief.

She turned to the armour, and grabbed the helmet off the top. The sleeping trooper rolled over in bed, and mumbled something. Rose paused. The trooper let out a snore, and Rose continued to take the First Order armour.

Rose donned the armour as quickly as she could, and then zipped out of the room towards the elevator. She only had to travel down two levels, and then she could bust into Poe’s cell and get him out. The elevator was already on Rose’s level. She entered, and watch the doors slide closed.

As the doors finished closing, a gloved hand zipped between them, and forced them to reopen. Outside stood the two troopers. They nodded to Rose, entered the elevator, and turned to face the door as it closed.

Rose sweated inside her armour. She said nothing. Neither did the troopers as the elevator began to descend.

“Hey, trooper,” said the stormtrooper to Rose’s left. “What do you think love is?”

The other stormtrooper sighed. “Are you seriously going to keep talking about this?”

“I’m just curious!”

“Love is an action,” said Rose, surprised by how the helmet changed the sound of her voice.

“Ooh, an action… Like, love is the things we do? I feel that,” said the left trooper.

“Come _on._ Love is fake. It’s a chemical reaction that makes people do stupid things. Why are we talking about this?” said the trooper on the right.

“You’re not stormtrooping for the love of it?” asked the left.

“I’m doing it because I like being paid to hit people.”

“Oh…”

“If you say anything else I’m telling the Supreme Leader you’re not following celibacy regulations.”

The left trooper went silent. Rose breathed a sigh of relief as the elevator doors opened, and the troopers exited. They headed to the right, away from the prison cells. Rose ducked out of the elevator and headed left.

The section was surprisingly empty. Rose looked down at the tracker. Poe’s beacon had disappeared, but she remembered the cell number. It was down the end of the hallway.

When she reached it, Rose realised the door was already open. A chill ran down her spine. The room was dark, but the light from the hall illuminated someone on their knees by the back wall.

It was Poe. His face was bruised, but he looked up at Rose with a mixture of happiness and pain. In front of him was the tracking beacon. Smashed to pieces. His eyes were full of sorrow. Rose knew something was wrong, but she raced over to him anyway.

“Rose. Get out of here,” said Poe.

“Poe! I’m not leaving without you,” said Rose.

“You won’t be leaving at all.” A shadow blocked all the light from the hall, coating the prison cell in darkness. Rose turned. In the doorway, her massive frame barely able to fit, stood Captain Phasma, her axe already humming with electricity in her hands.


	18. Chapter 18

The Resistance reconvened on the Millenium Falcon, which drifted in a system filled with barren planets and a dying sun. Poe’s X-Wing and Demi’s TIE Fighter were attached to the Falcon, their exit hatches leading directly into the ship.

Rey had entered the ship first, along with Demi. They had quickly shared their information. Lando and Chewie bowed their heads at the news of Finn. BB-8 trilled furiously when discussing Poe’s continued imprisonment by the First Order, and Rose’s subsequent disappearance. Chewie explained what had happened on Kashyyk, and how he and Lando had managed to convinced the Wookies and the Mandalorians to join them against the First Order. Lando followed with disturbing reports of the First Order’s new plan: radio silence throughout the Yavin system, and several others reporting mind control droids.

Lando had then asked about the whereabouts of Kylo Ren. Things had escalated quickly.

Right now, everyone was in the common hall. C3PO, R2-D2, BB-8, and D-O stood off to one side. Demi leaned on the other side of the couches, hand at her hip, her eyes full of anger. Lando stood near the hallway, his blaster drawn and aimed. Rey stood by the computer bank, her hand on Chewie’s shoulder, pleading with him. Chewbacca stood with his hands wrapped around Kylo Ren’s throat, who was pinned high up against the wall. He kicked his feet, but seemed remarkably compliant with Chewie’s intent to kill him.

He had appeared in the common room moments after Lando had asked about him. Rey urged calm, but nobody was particularly inclined to listen. Everybody knew somebody who had been killed by Kylo Ren’s hand.

“There’s absolutely no way, Rey,” said Lando, his gun trained on Kylo’s head. Chewie growled in agreement.

“We need him. He knows where Hux is going. And our forces are depleted as it is,” said Rey, shaking Chewie by the shoulder. Chewie did not budge.

“Rey, he killed Han. He killed _Finn_.”

“ _I know,_ ” said Rey. She glared at Lando. She hadn’t forgotten Finn. Lando knew that. His expression softened.

“He’s going to betray us,” said Demi.

“If he does, he won’t live through it. I promise you all, he won’t. But we need his help. We need to give him a chance,” said Rey. Chewie’s grip around Kylo’s throat loosened. He wanted nothing more than to continue throttling his godson. But Rey was right. Lando lowered his blaster. Demi took her hand off the blaster at her hip.

Kylo dropped to the ground, and took a few deep, heaving breaths. He looked around the room. Angry faces, ready to have him blasted to pieces with a single wrong step. Kylo tried to compose himself.

“Speak,” said Rey.

“Hux is on Exogul. It is an old Sith world. He made several visits, thinking I was unaware. It is the mostly likely location for his base of operations,” said Kylo. He turned to the console behind him, and brought up the galactic map. He input its co-ordinates. Another uncharted system.

“Mostly likely? Not guaranteed?” said Lando. His blaster was lowered, but remained in his hand.

“I can’t guarantee it. But I don’t know where else he’d go.”

Lando walked up to the galactic map, through a cloud of stars, and over to Exogul.

“Why Exogul?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. I believe he would be operating the mind-control droids from his capital ship. There must be something else on Exogul.”

“We need to rescue Poe and Rose, then destroy the First Order fleet, as well as deal with whatever additional plans he has on Exogul…” said C3PO. “I am concerned we do not have the information, nor the firepower, for this endeavour.”

“We’re gonna take a shot anyway,” said Lando. Rey nodded her agreement. The energy in the room had changed. Despite their losses, and despite Kylo Ren being in the room, they had a good idea of where Hux was. They had the Resistance, the Wookies, and the Mandalorians. They had a plan. They had a chance, and that was enough to buoy spirits.

“Chewie, you think you and the old man can sneak onto Hux’s ship and get Poe and Rose out?” asked Rey. Chewie grabbed Lando in a hug, and roared.

“Kylo Ren and I can head down to the planet’s surface. See if whatever Hux is working on can be solved with a generous application of lightsaber.” Rey looked at Kylo. He nodded.

“We still have no way to take out three star destroyers with our current armament,” said C3PO. BB-8 trilled in response. He rolled around on the ground, between the standing organics, laying out his plan in beeps and whistles. Lando raised his eyebrows.

“What! This is absurd, impossible, risky, ridiculous, and quite frightening!” said C3PO.

R2D2 screeched his approval.

“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” shouted D-O.

Rey looked over at Demi. “Can you do it?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” said Demi.

“Do you want to try?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

The group shared hugs and said their goodbyes. Kylo stood awkwardly over by the table. Demi and the droids headed for her TIE Fighter. Lando headed for the cockpit, to send the co-ordinates for Exogul to Kashyyk. Chewie moved to remove Finn’s casket from Demi’s ship and place it inside the Falcon.

Kylo made his way towards the X-Wing. Rey’s hand flashed to her waist, and then her saber was ignited at Kylo’s neck in a single move. Golden sparks tickled at his throat. He leaned back to avoid it, bending backwards over the table behind him.

“Don’t think for a second, not one second, that I will ever forgive you,” said Rey, her teeth bared. “But if you help us destroy the First Order, and then you disappear into some forgotten corner of the galaxy so I _never_ hear from you again, I’m planning on forgetting you.”

Kylo nodded. She deactivated her lightsaber, and headed for the X-Wing. Kylo sucked in a thin, nervous breath.

The X-Wing and the TIE Fighter detached from the Falcon. Kashyyk confirmed that they would immediately head for Exogul. The final battle between the Resistance and the First Order was about to begin.


	19. Chapter 19

First, the Millenium Falcon appeared above Exogul. Lando and Chewie looked down at the planet, and could see nothing. No First Order star destroyers hung in the air. Nothing appeared down below. All they could see were grey, whirling clouds, punctuated all over by flashes of purple light.

Next came Demi in her TIE Fighter. C3PO sat in the rear gunner’s seat behind her, BB-8 on his lap. D-0 vibrated nervously at Demi’s feet. R2 rested awkwardly on the rear control panel, leaning forward onto Threepio. It hadn’t been easy to fit all the droids in a TIE Fighter, but the Resistance were nothing if not inventive.

“Why do I have to be here?” asked Threepio.

“Honestly? They didn’t know what else to do with you,” said Demi.

“I could’ve stayed on Kashyyk! Or on the Falcon!”

“I don’t think they wanted you on Kashyyk, and I know Lando didn’t want you on the Falcon.”

“Oh dear,” said Threepio.

“I’m sure we’ll find some use for you!” said Demi, in an effort to be encouraging.

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

Next, Poe’s X-Wing warped in above Exogul. Rey and Kylo were silent inside. They had little to say to each other now. All they shared was a mission to complete.

Then, the rest of the Resistance fleet entered. Smatterings of Y-Wings and X-Wings. The refurbished LAAT gunships of the Wookie army. A mess of different gunships won in conflict or through bounties flown by the Mandalorians. The fleet was many times bigger than it had been after the First Order destroyed the Resistance base. Still, it was many times smaller than the one available to the First Order. It would have to be enough.

Lando gave the order, and the Resistance fleet descended into the clouds of Exogul. The clouds were thick, and pilots quickly realised that the flashes of purple were bolts of lightning thrown from storm clouds. It was tough going, but the fleet managed to escape the clouds relatively unscathed.

They descended onto drab, grey world. The surface was cracked slate, with pillars of obsidian rising haphazardly across it. Cloud cover blotted out the sun, leaving the flashes of lightning as the only source of light.

The three First Order star destroyers hovered over a massive pyramid. Completely invisible below the clouds, they now loomed before the Resistance as they rushed forward. Several staircases broke the smooth, obsidian face of the pyramid, leading from the ground up into the strange structure. Rey and Kylo sensed that this is where Hux would be hiding.

“Alright, everybody knows what they’re doing,” said Lando. Chewie roared in agreement. Various excited chatterings blared through the commsn.

“Demi, get those droids onto _The Vengeance_. We’re heading for _The Supremacy_. Rey, do…” he continued, trailing off. A swarm of TIE Fighters raced towards them, far quicker than he’d expected. The battle had already begun.

Green light erupted around the fleet. The Resistance broke off into squadrons, engaging the TIE Fighters as best they could. The sky was now lit with laser fire and exploding ships.

Lando and Chewie made a beeline for _The Supremacy_. They hoped Poe and Rose could hold their own for a few more minutes.

Demi made her way towards _The Vengeance_. BB-8’s plan was absurd, but it was the only plan they had. Demi wasn’t one to underestimate a droid anyhow.

Rey and Kylo headed down towards the planet’s empty surface, and the temple that rose from it. It was time to stop Supreme Leader Hux, and dismantle the First Order once and for all.

\---

The axe fell. Rose dodged out of the way. With Phasma’s massive frame in the room, there wasn’t much space to manoeuvre. She was barely able to swing her axe without raking it across the roof. Rose found herself pressed against the wall.

But Phasma was just as pinned. She couldn’t move so easily now that she was half machine. Poe leapt to his feet and scrambled between her legs as Phasma pulled her axe out of the ground. Rose followed him out the door. They could hear Phasma growl with frustration behind them, and heard her booming footsteps as she turned to follow them.

Alarm klaxons blared. The hallway filled with flashing red light. The First Order had known she was coming. She’d wandered right into their trap. Had those stormtroopers in the elevator known? Rose wracked her brain for a new plan. But she couldn’t shake the thought that Hux knew what she was thinking. Would she just walk into another trap with whatever she came up with?

Poe ran with his hands cuffed behind his back. Phasma had opened the door to his cell only minutes before Rose had arrived. She knew Rose would come. She crushed the tracking beacon in front of him, and disappeared down the hall. Moments later, Rose poked her head into the doorway. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Phasma let them run. Hux’s whole plan was to toy with him. Still, he sprinted down the hallway, Rose ahead of him, Phasma marching up slowly behind them.

Rose reached the elevator, and frantically pressed the button. The elevator did not arrive. Phasma was close behind them, her booming footsteps shaking the hallway floor. Poe elbowed a button, and opened the door next to the elevator. It led to a tiny chamber with a ladder leading up.

“Can you get me out of these cuffs?” asked Poe. Rose pulled the Darksaber off her belt, and ignited it. Poe raised his eyebrows, but turned to let her cut his cuffs off.

“Where’d you get that?” said Poe

“Celly gave it to me,” said Rose.

“Celly had a _lightsaber_?”

“Well, she stole it.”

“She _stole_ a _lightsaber_?”

“Poe, we have more pressing concerns than your sister’s criminal activity!” Rose slashed through the cuffs, and they dropped to the ground. Poe leapt onto the ladder, and began to scramble upwards. Rose followed close behind. They could no longer hear Phasma following them.

“Where are we going?” asked Poe.

“The engine hall. We can sneak out of the exhaust vents.”

“Do you have a ship waiting?”

“My A-Wing should still be there.”

They scrambled up to the top of the ladder, and exited into another hallway. Rose knew the way back to the engine hall. As they ran, they encountered no other stormtroopers or officers. Not even an engineer. _The Supremacy_ was silent.

Rose and Poe ran into the engine hall. All of the activity from before had disappeared. The engines idled, emitting a dull yellow glow. The bridge they ran onto headed directly into the maw of one of the engines. Rose imagined it would not be a good place to stand when the engines were active. Ahead of them, she saw the tiny port that led to the exhaust vent.

As they raced across the bridge, they heard Phasma’s footsteps once again. Poe hadn’t expected her to catch up to them so quickly. Rose stopped at the door of the exhaust port. It was closed. She pressed the buttons on the panel beside it, but they did nothing. Poe raced over to the other side. Neither door would open. They had been locked, pre-emptively. The First Order had expected Rose to come back.

Rose turned, and looked down the bridge. Phasma stood at the other end, her shock axe held ready. Rose looked out a window along the side of the hall. They were no longer on Mustafar. Even if they had gotten out through the exhaust port, her A-Wing would be long gone. They had failed.

Poe turned too, and faced Phasma.

“Supreme Leader Hux promised me FN-2187,” said Phasma, walking towards them. “According to reports, he has already been eliminated. A pity. I will have to settle for his sad little friends.”

Eliminated? Rose and Poe hadn’t known about Finn. Their visions clouded over with anger. How much more would the First Order take from them? How many more friends could they possibly lose?

Rose rushed at Phasma, and Poe followed. Phasma raised her axe ready to swing.

Poe was halfway towards Phasma when he realised he didn’t have a weapon. He was three-quarters of the way there when he started to doubt he could punch his way through Phasma’s armour. Thankfully, this was when Rose ignited the Darksaber.

Phasma swung at Rose, who raised the Darksaber in response. She had no direct training with a saber or a sword, but she’d watched Rey and Finn train often enough to have a slight idea of what to do. She successfully blocked Phasma’s axe as it crashed down against the blade. She did not brace herself against the force of Phasma’s swing, however, and was smashed backwards along the bridge.

As Phasma swung, Poe ran past her hip. He reached out a hand for the blaster hanging from her belt, and missed. His fingers barely grazed the cool metal of the E-11. Poe stopped behind Phasma, and she turned towards him.

“You wouldn’t attack an unarmed man, would you Captain?” said Poe. He leapt backwards as the electro-axe crashed into the floor where he had just been standing in. Clearly, honourable combat wasn’t one of Phasma’s largest concerns right now.

Phasma yanked the axe out of the ground, stepped towards Poe, and swung again, lightning-fast. Thankfully, Rose had returned to her feet, and raced over to Phasma’s side. She swung at Phasma’s axe as hard as she could. The Darksaber bounced the axe backwards as it connected, sending Phasma twisting and stumbling sideways.

Poe took his chance at the gun again. He ran towards Phasma as she stumbled, reached out a hand as she braced herself, and wrapped his fingers around the barrel of the blaster and she hefted the axe in her hands again. Poe continued running, tearing the blaster from her belt. Phasma made her way towards Rose, who held the Darksaber up defensively.

Poe blasted Phasma in the back. The bolts crashed against her chrome armour, leaving tiny black burn-marks all over. Unfortunately, the armour seemed to absorb most of the blaster’s impact. Phasma turned, unharmed, and tilted her head. At least Poe had managed to annoy her.

Once again, Phasma raised her axe above her head. She took three massive, lumbering steps towards Poe, and swung down. Poe tried to fall back, but tripped over his feet. He fell to the ground below the axe. Poe closed his eyes. He heard it whistling towards him.

Rose slid between Phasma’s legs. She slashed the Darksaber out above her. The blade connected with the shaft of Phasma’s axe. Silently, the Darksaber sliced through the shock-axe, cutting it in half.

The axe head fell to the ground next to Poe, its electricity fizzling out as it landed. Rose finished sliding, and spun back up to her feet. Poe scrambled up behind her. Rose held the Darksaber towards Phasma, and Poe aimed his blaster.

Phasma laughed. It echoed out from under her helmet, a booming sound that seemed a thousand metres away from Rose and Poe. She tossed the shaft of her axe away. It fell down from the bridge, down to the bottom of the engine hall below.

“Supreme Leader Hux told me stories about the Darksaber,” said Phasma. “He explained that it was a dangerous tool of the Mandalorians, and a great font of power.” She reached down towards her leg. A section of machinery opened itself, and out of the side of her thigh appeared an angular rectangle, just like the one Rose was holding.

“I did not expect you to have it. But the Supreme Leader is wise, and he predicted the possibility that the Darksaber would be used against me. He ensured I was prepared.”

Phasma pressed a button. Light erupted from the top of the rectangle. The majority of the blade was composed of blinding white light, with a pitch black edge. Just like the Darksaber, but inverted. The saber looked tiny in Phasma’s massive hand.

Phasma laughed again. She raised the Brightsaber, and rushed towards Rose and Poe.

\---

Demi had managed to fly through the mess of First Order TIE Fighters relatively unscathed. As she escaped from the fight, she realised that none of the TIE Fighters were following her. Some luck. She figured it had something to do with her flying around a TIE of her own. _The Vengeance_ loomed ahead of her. Demi made her way towards the shield wall of one of the docks.

Demi still had the access passwords for the First Order fleet. They hadn’t been changed since the Battle of Crait. Demi assumed that Hux’s efforts to push Kylo Ren out, and to then re-establish a stranglehold on the galaxy, had led to a reduction in security efforts. The First Order weren’t quite the sticklers for protocol that the Empire had been.

They still cared for _some_ protocol. As she piloted her TIE Fighter down onto the floor of the ship bay of _The Vengeance_ , Demi recalled the fact that her ship was covered in colourful paint. There was no way somebody in this dock didn’t know about her mutiny against the First Order, and the bands of red and green all over her ship were going to be noticed.

Demi wasn’t much of a liar. But BB-8’s plan was all they had, and cracks were showing through the organisation of the First Order. They had a chance, and it would have to be enough. She figured she could at least muster some half-truths.

Demi landed, hopped out of the cockpit, and began pulling the droids out. C3PO was last, and on exit, Demi slapped a pair of handcuffs over his wrists. Threepio feigned surprise. The other three droids were equipped with fake restraining bolts. They made their way to the exit of the ship bay, Demi marching behind them as imperiously as she could manage.

“Halt.” Demi halted. She cringed inside her helmet, and turned on her heel. A First Order officer marched up to her, with a genuine imperiousness Demi hoped she could imitate.

“LJ-6230. My file says you are a deserter, and a known ally of the Resistance. Give me one good reason I should not arrest you immediately,” said the officer. She held a clipboard, and tapped a pen on it impatiently.

“I’ve captured four key Resistance droids. Many of their future plans and current strategies are stored within them,” said Demi. Her voice wavered, but the helmet’s voice modulator evened it out. She prayed the officer wouldn’t notice.

“Why would I believe you?” The officer glanced back at her ship with disgust. Clearly, she did not agree with Demi’s alternative paint job.

“Supreme Leader Hux sent me on a special mission to infiltrate the Resistance and acquire their plans. Are you going to doubt the Supreme Leader?”

“I have heard of no such mission. Maybe we should take this to the Supreme Leader on _The Supremacy?_ ”

“If you want. You know that the Supreme Leader has plans upon plans that we only know a small part of. When he discovers that you interrupted my mission, how do you think that will go for you?” Demi said this in as cold and blunt a way as possible. She’d heard how these officers talked to each other, and how they’d politicked using hidden knowledge and veiled threats.

It seemed to work! The officer swallowed nervously. Protocol was all well and good, but nobody wanted to face Hux even on a good day.

“Well… Then… I assume you are heading to meet General Tariss?”

General _Tariss._ Demi knew the name. But not at that rank. She didn’t like what she heard.

“You assume correctly.”

“Very good. Would you like me to clean that filth off your TIE Fighter?”

“I expect it to be done,” said Demi. She really hoped she and the droids could finish with this whole defeating the First Order thing and get back before they actually cleaned it off. She’d spent a lot of time painting that ship.

Demi and the droids continued towards the bridge. The design of all the star destroyers was much the same. Hallways and elevators in the same place, barracks and mess halls usually in the same place, occasionally some small differences depending on the specific tasks a ship was assigned. The group hopped in an elevator, and took it all the way up to the top floor, right by the bridge.

They exited to the barrels of two raised blasters. Demi paused. The stormtroopers aimed one blaster at her, and one at Threepio. Immediately, Artoo, D-O, and BB-8 began to wander off down the hall.

“You used an old elevator code,” said one of the stormtroopers. Out of the corner of Demi’s eye, she could see the little droids hatching a plan.

“Threepio,” she said. “This stormtrooper is going to shoot you. You better run.”

“Oh dear!” yelled Threepio. He began to waddle away from the troopers, heading left down the hall.

“Hey! Get back here!” yelled the trooper, his blaster aimed at Threepio. Threepio continued to run. The trooper sighed, and walked off after him.

“You stay right there,” said the other trooper, not moving his blaster. Demi said nothing, but looked over at the droids.

Artoo had set himself up on a 45 degree angle, a couple of metres away from the trooper. Behind him, BB-8 had attached a grappling cable to either side of the hall, and was pulling back on them as hard as he could to generate tension. In front of BB-8, D-O was ready, revving his little wheel. They had formed a droid ballista.

BB-8 reeled in his cables as fast as he could. He raced forwards, pushing D-O along with him. D-O reached Artoo, and released the brakes on his wheel. The force of BB-8’s push, along with D-O’s spinning wheel, launched him up Artoo’s back and into the air. For a moment, the universe stood still. D-O flew.

He crashed into the side of the stormtrooper’s helmet. The stormtrooper dropped like a sack of Rancor dung. D-O bounced off the helmet and landed smoothly on his wheel.

“Violence!” he screamed, joyfully.

Down the other end of the hall, the walking stormtrooper had caught up with Threepio. Demi raced up behind them.

“I don’t know why I didn’t just shoot you, droid,” said the stormtrooper, grabbing Threepio by the arm. He felt a tap on his shoulder. The trooper turned his head, and Demi smacked him across the face with the butt of her blaster. He released Threepio’s arm, and collapsed to the floor.

“I knew you’d be useful, Threepio,” said Demi.

“Oh dear, oh no,” mumbled Threepio. She guided him back to the other droids, who were trilling contentedly.

The group made their way down the hall. The massive, sliding doors of the bridge rose up in front of them. Demi pressed a button, and they slide open. The group walked inside, Demi with her blaster raised.

She dropped her blaster to her side. The bridge was empty of officers. Instead, it contained six stormtroopers, each one with their blaster raised towards Demi and the droids. At the far end of the bridge, a staircase led up to the main series of panels that controlled _The Vengeance_. General Tariss stood smiling at the top of the stairs.

“Ah, LJ-6230. It has been a long time.”

\---

TIE Fighters hunted the Falcon down. There must have been orders to destroy it as quickly as possible. Maybe it was an effort to drain the morale of the Resistance? Maybe Hux knew they’d be coming for Poe and Rose. Lando couldn’t tell. Regardless, he had a lot of laser to dodge.

He manoeuvred the Falcon as best he could. He hated to admit it, but he wasn’t quite the pilot Han Solo was. Thankfully, Chewie may have been even better than Han. They managed to weave their way through oncoming TIE Fighters, and even destroy a few of them with the forward guns.

Rey and Kylo flew directly behind them. The TIE Fighters treated them as just another Resistance ship. There were hundreds of First Order pests, and blaster bolts and missiles zipped all around them. But they needed to clear a hole for the Falcon to reach _The Supremacy_.

Rey gunned the X-Wing forward, ahead of the Falcon, and closed her eyes. The TIE Fighters became visible, a clear outline in the Force as it wove itself around them. She pulled the trigger, and heard the X-Wing’s cannons firing. When she opened her eyes, she was soaring through a fog of embers and black smoke. Five TIE Fighters fell to the surface of Exogul below.

“Much obliged, Jedi!” said Lando over the commlink. He maxed out the thrusters, and directed the Falcon through the smoke towards _The Supremacy_. Rey turned, and headed for the base of the Sith pyramid down below.

Lando and Chewie blasted the metal plating outside the shield wall of one of the lower level docks. As they got closer, Lando tried Rose on the comms. Nothing. He risked the First Order picking up on their plan, but at this point, time mattered more than secrecy.

The external plating erupted into sparks, and was shorn away from the ship. Behind it was an intricate network of circuits. The Falcon blasted that too. It dissolved under laser fire, and the shield wall fizzled and disappeared. Lando and Chewie raced into the bowels of _The Supremacy,_ guns blazing.

The interior of the ship was quiet, given that most of its usual occupants were currently out flying TIE Fighters. Lando and Chewie blasted at the few remaining stormtroopers and officers, as they landed the ship.

They ran down the ramp as it extended, Lando with his blaster drawn, Chewie with his bowcaster.

Demi had told Lando and Chewie that Rose had snuck into _The Supremacy_ via the exhaust ducts. Odds were good she would try to get out the same way. Lando expected that, by now, she’d rescued Poe. If they had any chance of finding them, it would be trapped in the engine hall, unable to exit through them due to the recently-activated engines. Lando and Chewie sprinted out of the ship bay, towards the back of the ship.

\---

The X-Wing was dwarfed by the massive Sith pyramid. As Rey and Kylo walked closer, they did not see any stormtroopers. It didn’t seem like there was any First Order activity on the ground at all. But an ominous energy hummed deep within the pyramid. Dark power resided here, and it had done so for a long time.

The pyramid itself was built from large, obsidian bricks. They were fitted together perfectly, and it seemed like there was nothing holding them together but their own weight. As Rey and Kylo reached the stairs, the perfectly cut lines of the pyramid became off-putting. It was not like the ramshackle construction the Resistance was capable of, welding bits and pieces together in the short periods of respite they had before the First Order struck again. Nor was it like the First Order’s calculated design, each line engineered and built perfectly straight. It was not natural, but it felt beyond manufactured. Here, the usual rules of the galaxy seemed not to apply.

“What do you think he has in there?” asked Rey, and the pair began to walk up the stairs.

“I don’t know. The Empire spent significant resources investigating these old temples. Often, research teams would just disappear, or they would form cults around what they found and refuse to return.”

“Cults?”

“Around powerful artefacts. The most fiercely loyal to the Empire would turn overnight. Eventually, the Empire spent more time destroying these places than excavating them.”

“Do you think Hux has joined a cult?”

“No. I think Hux knew about the risks. He wouldn’t have come here if he hadn’t sacrificed a handful of troops determining its safety first.”

“Something else, then.”

“Something worse.”

The pair reached the top of the stairs, which ended at a tall, triangular doorway. The doorway seemed not to have a door; instead, it appeared to lead into an endless, opaque nebula of shadows.

Kylo glanced over at Rey, wondering what the plan was. But Rey was already walking into the doorway. Kylo hustled to follow her.

There was a moment of chill as Rey passed through the doorway. The shadows seemed to wrap themselves around her, blinding her. She felt a pulse of fear. She should turn back. She had to. But then, she took another step forward, and the shadows released their grip. Rey turned to the doorway, and saw Kylo pass through the shadows next to her. The shadows blocked out the staircase where they had just stood. The outside world of Exogul had entirely disappeared.

They emerged from the shadows at the top of another staircase, shorter than the one outside. It led down to a plateau, which was covered in ancient symbols that glowed maroon. Two other staircases led up on the left and right of the plateau, to other doors to Exogul’s surface. Beside each staircase were a pair of doors, that must have led to other sections of the temple. The staircase directly across from them, however, led up towards a small room.

It was small, a hollowed out cube that looked down on the plateau. Normally, the stairs would lead up to it unimpeded. However, it was now blocked by a shield wall, its bright blue a startling contrast to the black and red around it. The silver machinery used to generate the wall had been hastily grafted to the unnerving Sith architecture.

As Rey and Kylo descended the stairs, they could see who was behind it. Supreme Leader Hux stood behind the fizzing shield of blue light, smiling down at the pair. Beside him, working at a panel controlling the wall, was a nervous looking Rodian engineer. Kylo Ren also noticed Officer Malorden lurking in the corner. Rey saw a strange, robed figure, green smoke emanating from under their hood, standing by the back wall.

Rey and Kylo walked to the middle of the plateau, and drew their lightsabers.

“I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting both of you,” said Hux. “I thought at least one of you would knock the other off on Mustafar. And to come here, together? I’m disappointed, Kylo. You wasted so much time trying to kill her, and now she’s tricked you into helping her.”

“You’re going to pay for betraying me, Hux,” said Kylo angrily, his fist clenching around his saber.

“No, I’m not. You’ve already lost, Kylo. And you’re so _angry_ about it. That’s your problem. Anger clouds your vision. Causes you to make mistakes. That’s why it was so easy to work out your plans on Mustafar. That’s why it was so easy to know that you’d come here looking for me if you survived.”

“We’re going to get past that shield wall eventually, Hux. You are no match for both of us, but if you surrender, this doesn’t have to be a fight,” said Rey.

“To be honest, I don’t really have a problem with you, Rey. You’re annoying, and you get in the way of my plans, but this isn’t personal. But you, Kylo. I’m going to enjoy this.”

“Enough of this,” hissed Kylo, igniting his saber and stepping towards the shield wall.

“Oh, I agree,” said Hux.

Kylo made his way towards the shield wall. Rey ignited her saber. Hux snapped his fingers, and the engineer pulled a lever on his control panel.

The doors all around them began to rumble. The ancient Sith stone slid aside on each one, opening to more murky shadows. Kylo continued towards Hux, but Rey paused. She had a bad feeling about this.

From the door to her left, a figure dressed in all black emerged, wearing a horribly familiar helmet. Out of each doorway, a similar spectre appeared. Kylo noticed them as well, and paused. They all wore helmets, similar to his old one.

Hux began to laugh from behind his shield.

“This temple is more like a tomb. A tomb for dead Jedi, filled with all sorts of artefacts. The first problem I faced was finding people who could use them. Thankfully, Kylo’s abandoned troupe of killers needed a new direction.”

The helmeted figures walked out until they surrounded Rey and Kylo. Kylo hissed. He thought they’d disbanded. He’d not heard from them since his early work with the First Order. But the Knights of Ren were here. Deadly warriors trained to kill Jedi. Surrounding him and Rey.

“This is treason,” said Kylo. None of the Knights responded.

“Goodbye, Rey. Goodbye, Kylo Ren. I’m glad you both survived Vader’s castle, really. I’d much prefer to _watch_ you die,” said Supreme Leader Hux.

Each of the Knights reached for their belts. Rey realised at the last second what artefacts Hux was talking about.

Each Knight removed a lightsaber, and ignited it. Blue and green light erupted throughout the temple, occluding the maroon glow of the floors. Rey raised her saber defensively. Kylo changed his stance, ready to attack. They awaited the first strike from the Knights.

\---

Lando and Chewie could hear the fighting before they reached the bridge of the engine hall. _The Supremacy_ was shockingly bereft of stormtroopers to fight. They had knocked out a couple on patrol, and had locked the doors on a squad preparing in one of the mess halls. Other than that, it seemed it was just Lando, Chewie, and the gonk droids on the ship.

They ran into the engine hall, and things didn’t look good. Rose was frantically deflecting blows from Captain Phasma. Both were holding lightsabers that seemed to dissolve the concept of light around them. Lando and Chewie looked at each other, confused. They didn’t know Phasma had a lightsaber. They _definitely_ didn’t know Rose had one.

Rose was being knocked back towards the open, idling engine. It was getting hotter with each step she had to take backwards. Poe stood in the middle of the bridge, blasting Phasma in the back to little effect.

Lando and Chewie immediately ran forward.

“Poe! Rose!” shouted Lando. Poe turned, and grinned. He honestly hadn’t been expecting backup. Rose was too busy for a reunion. She took another step back as Phasma swung across at her. Another step back towards the inferno of the engine.

Chewie tossed his bowcaster to Lando, and sprinted ahead. He sprinted past Poe, and up behind Phasma. The roar of the engines was deafening. Chewie could feel the ends of his fur begin to sizzle in the heat.

Chewie wrapped his arms around Phasma’s waist. He tensed his legs, and lifted her up. She swung wildly at Rose, but her blade flew far over Rose’s head.

Phasma was absurdly heavy, but Chewie was absurdly strong. He raised Phasma up, lifted her above his head, and slammed her back into the ground. Her lightsaber bounced off to one side, and dis-ignited. Rose bolted, away from the engine, and back over to Poe. Chewie took a few steps back towards his friends.

Phasma rose slowly. She took her lightsaber, and clipped it back onto her belt. Chewie changed stance. Phasma did the same.

“I always wanted to fight a Wookie,” said Phasma. Chewie growled in response, and prepared to charge.

Lando, Poe, and Rose could hear the clattering sound of boots. They look up, and around them. The engine hall was surrounded by scaffolding, just below the roofline, with doors that led off into an unknown section. Out of these doors ran a squadron of stormtroopers. They lined up all along the scaffolding, and raised their blasters. Likely a hundred stormtroopers, all with the high ground.

“It’s a pity I won’t get the chance,” added Phasma. Chewie hung his head. Poe, Rose, and Lando placed their weapons on the ground, and put their hands up.


	20. Chapter 20

Demi stood in the doorway of _The Vengeance’s_ bridge with her hands raised. Six blasters were aimed at her chest. At the top of the bridge, Tariss stood with her hands behind her back, a satisfied smile on her face. Demi hadn’t expected Tariss. Last time they’d seen each other, they had stood on opposite sides of a room, a galactic map floating between them.

Tariss pointed out Starkiller base. She smiled. She ran her hand through the map, following the blast from Starkiller’s cannon, lingering at each point where a planet dissolved into dust. Demi was horrified, but she was saved by her helmet. Tariss couldn’t see her disgust.

But that wasn’t all. Demi honestly didn’t know if she would have left the First Order, even knowing about Starkiller. It was when Tariss dragged another trooper out of a prison cell, and dumped her in front of Demi. Tariss handed Demi a blaster. The trooper had betrayed the First Order, and shared information with the now-obsolete New Republic. The order was simple. Kill him, and become an official part of the First Order.

Demi held the blaster against the trooper’s forehead. He had been stripped of his armour, and fresh cuts and bruises lacerated his face. He was crying. He was begging. Demi held the blaster for a long time, and didn’t pull the trigger.

Tariss drew her own blaster, and shot the trooper in the back. He slumped to the ground. Demi dropped her blaster, and looked up. Tariss was scowling now. Disappointed. Demi had been banished back to the mess hall. That was too much. She vowed to escape as soon as she could.

But Demi was still inducted into the ranks of the First Order, despite her failure. They were desperate for troops, to continue their growth across the galaxy. Tariss’s punishment came as an assignment for Demi, alone, to snuff out a rebellious religious sect on a noxious, hostile planet. That was when she pulled the tracking equipment out of her fighter. She had flown into toxic fog, and disappeared from the First Order forever.

“I thought I’d see you again, LJ-6230. Your _crash_ on Thoxis was rather suspicious,” said General Tariss. Demi ignored her. She looked over to the troopers instead.

“One day, Tariss will have you shot, just like she’s going to have you shoot me,” said Demi. The troopers did not respond. At her side, the droids began to wander off, rolling between control panels. First Order training entailed a lot of contempt for the capabilities of droids. Demi allowed herself a smile. She knew that Tariss and her troops would not notice what the droids were doing until it was too late. Only Threepio remained beside her, his hands also raised.

Tariss laughed. “Take off your helmet. I want to see your face before I blast you.”

Demi removed her helmet. Tariss drew a blaster off her belt. She made her way down the stairs.

Demi looked at the troopers again. Artoo had made his way around to the left hand side of the group. BB-8 had swung around the right. Behind him, D-O was accessing a control panel by the wall. Demi saw the lights flicker.

“Trust me, Tariss doesn’t care about you. I know most of you don’t like her. In a moment, the lights are going to go out. You’ll have five seconds to run. After that… Well, I wouldn’t side with Tariss if I were you.” A few of the troopers glanced at each other uneasily.

“Get the droids!” Tariss hissed, but it was too late. The lights in the bridge turned off. For a moment, it was pitch black. Only the flashing, purple lightning of Exogul was visible out of the windows. Demi heard running footsteps, and felt a number of bodies rush past her.

The lights came back on. Tariss stood between the two remaining troopers, who continued to aim their blasters. The remaining troopers’ footsteps were now just echoes in the hallways behind Demi.

In the same moment, Artoo raised a taser attachment to the left-hand trooper, and BB-8 shocked the trooper on the right. Tariss fired her blaster. Threepio, who now awkwardly handled a blaster that had been handed to him by a fleeing trooper, fired back. The two troopers beside Tariss dropped, blue coils of electricity leaping across their armour. Tariss’s shot caught Demi in the shoulder. Threepio’s shot caught Tariss in the chest. Both Demi and Tariss fell backwards, onto the ground.

Demi grimaced. The bolt had caught her between her armour plates. Her vision swam. She reached for her belt, and pulled out a bacta salve, which she immediately pressed to her shoulder. The burning pain began to subside immediately. The boiling flesh of her shoulder began to cool.

On the other side of the room, Tariss and her troopers did not move. Threepio had hit her square in the chest. She was dead by the time she’d hit the floor. BB-8, Artoo, and D-O all rushed over to check on Demi.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” said Demi, pushing herself into a seated position with her uninjured arm. The droids trilled happily. Threepio stood statue-still beside her. He dropped his blaster onto the ground.

“Oh dear,” said Threepio.

“You did a good job, Threepio. You saved my life!” said Demi.

“Oh dear,” repeated Threepio.

Demi slowly made her way to her feet. She shook Threepio until he started paying attention, and then the group made their way past Tariss’s body, and up the stairs.

“Well, BB-8, looks like the first part of your plan worked,” said Demi. “How are you feeling about the second?”

BB-8 whistled confidently.

The group spread out amongst the control panels. Artoo, BB-8, and D-O all directly accessed their consoles. Demi and Threepio went for the keyboards. Outside the ship’s window, the battle above Exogul raged. Blaster fire filled the sky, and every so often, a ship would burst into flames and descend down to the planet’s grim surface.

“Okay, I’m shutting down communications from _The Vengeance_ now. That should help everybody out in the sky,” said Demi. She tapped a few buttons, one-handed, on her console. A screen in front of her blared red. A warning alarm. Apparently, communications had failed.

“I’m ordering all troopers to head for the escape pods.”

Artoo and BB-8 whistled their disagreement.

“The escape pods?” asked Threepio. “You’re letting the First Order escape?”

“The First Order won’t survive this. But those troopers deserve a second chance, like I got.”

“Generous!” shouted D-O. The other droids beeped their agreement.

“Okay team,” said Demi. “Let’s dismantle a fleet!”

\---

Celly flew her refurbished ARC-170 Fighter through the cloud of First Order ships. She had found it on Mandalore, when she had made an early pilgrimage to the irradiated planet. A number of battles had been fought there during the Clone Wars. Much of the new Mandalorian fleet were old ships that had been rebuilt and reworked.

She was a decent pilot. Nothing like Poe, but Poe had to be better than her at _something,_ she supposed. Celly flew towards the three First Order star destroyers, blasting holes through TIE Interceptors, narrowly rolling out of the way of a missile that had been tracking her.

It was then that she saw the engines of one of the star destroyers firing. _The Vengeance_ , off to the left-hand side of the larger _Supremacy,_ and slightly above it. It began listing towards the large ship, very slowly at first, but as Celly zipped through another cloud of First Order debris, she could see the long, triangular nose of the ship heading towards _The Supremacy_ with intent.

The nose crashed against the bridge of _The Supremacy_. Massive chunks of silver metal and golden sparks burst out from each ship. Explosions began along the length of both ships. Together, _The Vengeance_ and _The Supremacy_ drifted towards the third First Order ship, which also erupted at various points into flames on contact.

Celly couldn’t believe it. As more fire appeared on each ship, and more metal sprinkled down onto the temple below, the First Order fighters began to panic. Within moments, the three First Order star destroyers had been disabled. The Resistance suddenly had the upper hand.

\---

The Knights of Ren surrounded Rey and Kylo with ancient Jedi weapons. They had all been trained in lightsaber combat. Kylo had been the only one who actually possessed a lightsaber at the time of their founding, but he did not doubt their abilities. Now, he faced twelve warriors who were nearly as competent as he was. He glanced over at Rey, who looked calm. Her golden saber was at the ready. They had fought well together before, in Snoke’s throne room, against his honour guard. But the honour guard were nothing compared to the Knight of Ren.

The Knights all attacked at the same time, rushing forward, six for Rey and six for Kylo. Kylo blocked, and ducked, and rolled. Rey dodged, and shifted, and spun her saber in an arc to deflect three blades all coming for her head.

Kylo and Rey shifted around each other, back to back. The attacks kept coming. Rey blocked a blow heading for Kylo, just behind his head. Kylo crouched low, and swung his leg out at another Knight thrusting his saber for Rey’s throat, sweeping across his feet and knocking him to the ground. Rey leapt into the air, over the Knights, as they struck. Kylo knocked another Knight back with the Force, and ran through the gap out of the circle.

Kylo was already tired. He’d never faced an enemy like this. He backed up to the stairs from which he and Rey had entered. Six Knights headed towards him once again.

Rey was calm. She felt something strange within this temple. Darkness, and pain, and evil abounded, of course. But down below, deep below, was a reservoir of hope. In the bowels of the temple lay thousands of ancient, dead Jedi. The Force still resonated within them. And it wasn’t just the Jedi who had been killed by the Sith and buried in this temple. It was the power of all the Jedi, all of their memories, brought up by those who rested down below. Rey didn’t know what it meant, but she felt lighter as she leapt around the onrushing Knights.

Rey eliminated the first Knight herself. He swung low, but too slowly. Rey’s lightsaber darted forward, and caught him in the chest. The Knight dropped his saber to the ground, and collapsed backwards.

Rey didn’t have much time to celebrate. Sabers continued to cut through the air in her direction. She leaned back, and barely evaded another attack. Unfortunately, Rey could not avoid the third Knight, who aimed her saber towards Rey’s back.

Kylo had managed to cut down another Knight. He had simply struck them, saber against saber, again and again, until their arms withered from blocking. Their saber dropped, and Kylo laced a gash across their chest. It was then that he looked up, and saw the saber heading for Rey’s back.

Rey sensed it a moment too late. But then, she sensed something else. Another presence, behind her. A protective force. The Knight’s saber never reached her back. She heard the clash of sabers behind her, and spun on her heel to see the Knight stumbling back.

Kylo had seen it. A Force ghost had appeared behind Rey, saber drawn, and deflected the Knight’s blow. The Jedi was a grinning Nautolan, wearing the robes of the Jedi during the Republic. Rey spun on her heels as the ghost Jedi disappeared back into a fog of blue and white, and cut the stumbling Knight down.

Kylo could not look for long. More Knights rushed after him, and no dead Jedi came to help him. He blocked. He dodged. He parried, and tried to land glancing blows. But the Knights kept coming, and it too all Kylo had in him just to survive.

As the battle continued, Rey felt more and more at peace. The first Jedi ghost she saw was a Togruta, with high blue horns and white striped skin, who swept the legs of an onrushing Knight. Rey ran up to the Knight, and plunged her saber down through his chest.

Rey turned, and saw two more Knights heading her way. A pair of Jedi appeared beside them, two humans. One had long hair and a green saber, the other was bald and wielded purple. They caught the Knights as they ran, clashing their sabers together and then twisting around, until the Knights could no longer hold their weapons. Their sabers clattered to the ground, and the Knights stumbled. Rey ran between them, and spun her saber in an arc as she passed, cutting them both down.

Kylo continued to struggle. Three Knights pursued him doggedly. He could see more ghosts appearing around Rey, and more Knights falling to her saber. But no help came for Kylo Ren. He was constantly on the back foot.

Six Knights remained. Three hunted Kylo, and three now surrounded Rey. They all swung at once. Rey blocked high, and slipped sideways around the other two strikes. They struck again, but this time, one of them was blocked by a ghostly lightsaber, held by a small, wrinkled Jedi with long ears. Rey knew this was Master Yoda, from the stories Master Luke had told.

Rey stepped around the other two Knights, and plunged her saber through the chest of the third.

The Knights attacked again. Rey leapt over the first’s low sweep, and parried the second’s overhead swing towards the ground. Another Jedi appeared, pinning the second Knight’s saber to the ground. He wore the armour of a clone trooper underneath his Jedi robe. His beard and hair were short-cropped, and he smiled as Rey stabbed the Knight through the side, just below the ribs. He too disappeared into a fog.

The last Knight, however, caught Rey by surprise. She turned to block, but he swung hard. Rey was off balance, and the clash of sabers sent hers flying through the air. The Knight kicked Rey in the stomach, and knocked her to the ground. She scrambled back. The Knight advanced, and raised his saber up to plunge down towards her.

That’s when Rey felt her heart beat again, the comfortable double beat she had become so used to. Behind the Knight, her saber rolled along the ground, into a glowing blue hand. It was Finn. He picked up her saber, and tossed it towards her. It arced through the air, landing perfectly in Rey’s outstretched mechanical hand.

The Knight swung down. Rey ignited her saber, directly up into the Knight’s stomach. The Knight’s swing lost momentum. He dropped his lightsaber, and it dis-ignited as it clattered to the floor. Rey dis-ignited hers, and the Knight slumped sideways to the ground.

Rey dashed to her feet. She looked over at Finn, who winked at her, and then dissolved into another cloud of fog. Rey felt her heartbeat return to the new normal, a singular, lonely pulse.

She looked up, and saw Kylo struggling with the final three Knights. Each parry came a millisecond slower, each dodge was a millimetre closer to the edge of one of the Knight’s blades. Rey leapt into the air. She felt the Force coalesce around her, and felt some familiar spirits as she landed in front of Kylo, and between the three remaining Knights.

Kylo knew the two spirits that formed on either side of Rey. One they’d seen recently, in the bowels of Vader’s castle. Anakin nodded towards Kylo. He heard Anakin’s voice in his head: _You’re not done yet, kid_. Kylo hadn’t seen the other Jedi since Crait. He’d been so angry then, and Luke Skywalker had used it to allow the Resistance to escape again. Luke had nothing to say to Kylo. He simply winked at him, a startlingly friendly gesture.

The Knights thrust their sabers towards Rey and the two spectral Jedi. Rey, Anakin, and Luke swung their sabers in a horizontal arc. At the same time, their blades connected with the necks of the Knights, and cut straight through. The heads of the Knights toppled from their necks, and their bodies collapsed to their knees, and then slumped to the floor in unison.

Rey turned to Anakin and Luke. Anakin nodded. Luke winked. Then, they both dissolved back into the mist.

The Knights of Ren were dead. Their dozen lightsabers and grim helmets were now just clutter on the floor. Rey dis-ignited her lightsaber. Kylo did the same. The maroon glow of the Sith sigils on the floor re-emerged. Rey and Kylo walked back towards Hux behind his ray shield.

Rey felt they’d won. But Kylo wasn’t so sure. Hux was still leering down at them. It wasn’t joy any longer, but nor did he look defeated. Hux was frustrated, but he wasn’t finished.

“It’s over, Hux,” said Rey, pointing her lightsaber towards him. “Deactivate the shield, or we’ll do it for you.”

Hux said nothing. Behind him, Kylo could see the occultist moving their hands, green mist shifting and coiling from inside their sleeves.

Kylo knew Hux. He knew that Hux would have plans upon plans. Maybe that’s why he reacted quicker, when he felt the Force ripple behind him. He turned, and activated his saber as he swung. From a little cloud of green mist behind him, a round droid had appeared. It was open on one side, revealing a row of sharp little teeth. A ring of red lights wrapped around the upper part of the dome. Kylo cut it in half. It clattered to the ground in two fizzling pieces.

Rey wasn’t so lucky. She was a half-second late. The compliance droid appeared behind her, and immediately zipped towards her head. She fell to the ground with a shout as the droid latched on, sinking its teeth into her scalp, reaching for her brain.

Kylo turned to Rey as she slowly made her way back to her feet. Her expression was numb, her eyes glazed over. Hux’s leer never wavered.

“Kill him,” said Hux. Rey ignited her saber. Kylo set his feet, and raised his own.

\---

Rose had failed. She hadn’t gotten Poe off of _The Supremacy_. Now, they were surrounded by troopers. Phasma made her way towards them. Chewie, Rose, Poe, and Lando all kneeled, with their hands behind their head. There was no hope left.

Until there was. As Phasma advanced, the ship began to rumble, then shake. Within seconds, the ship was rocking violently. Phasma collapsed to one knee. On the scaffold balconies, the troopers were tossed aside, some over the railing, others just collapsing on top of one another. The Resistance members all fell on to their sides, desperately grabbing for the bridge’s railing.

Lando grinned as he was tossed around. Clearly, BB-8’s absurd little plan had worked. _The Vengeance_ had been crashed into _The Supremacy_.

Two of _The Supremacy’s_ massive engines failed. The one directly ahead of Lando went critical. Its dim orange glow rapidly became brighter and redder. _The Supremacy_ was not long for this world. They had to get back to the Falcon as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, Phasma remained. The bridge had stopped moving so violently, and she had returned to her feet, and ignited the Brightsaber. The Resistance scrambled to their feet in response. Poe raised his blaster. Lando raised the bowcaster. Chewie beat his chest, and roared. Rose activated the Darksaber.

Chewie was closest to Phasma. She swung for his head. But Chewie was surprisingly agile for an old Wookie, and he rolled away from her strike. Rose rushed ahead of him, and swung right back for Phasma’s head. Phasma parried, and knocked Rose out of the way.

Chewie’s bowcaster had a lot more kick than Lando’s blaster. Lando fired the bowcaster, and the bolt caught Phasma square in the chest. It knocked her back a step, but hardly seemed to slow her down. Poe landed a few shots on her armour with his E-11, but they were as ineffective as before. He decided to try a different tactic.

Poe holstered his blaster, and ran towards Phasma. As he made his way across the bridge, Chewie was trying a new tactic of his own. He made his way around Phasma, over to her organic arm. As Phasma swung at Rose again, Chewie caught her arm. He sunk his fingers underneath the metal plate on her shoulder, and pulled.

Phasma clenched her metal fist, and swung it at Chewie. It caught him directly in the face. But he maintained his grip as he fell back, and wrenched the plate off Phasma’s shoulder, exposing bare skin.

Poe reached Phasma, and raised his hand into the air. Rose understood the signal. She tossed the Darksaber towards Poe, ducking under a wide swing from Phasma as she did. The saber dis-ignited in midair.

Poe caught it, and re-ignited it. He was off to Phasma’s side, and she wasn’t paying any attention to him. Unfortunate for Phasma. Poe swung the Darksaber up, straight through her machine arm. He cut right through her piston-powered bicep. Half of Phasma’s arm crashed down onto the bridge.

She turned towards Poe, swinging the Brightsaber furiously towards him. Poe leapt back. As he did, Chewie leapt onto Phasma’s back. He grabbed her helmet, and wrenched it upward. It came off her head with the screech of metal-on-metal. Phasma shook her massive shoulders, and tossed Chewie off her back.

Nobody in the Resistance had seen Phasma’s face for some time. The left-hand side was now all cybernetic, with rivers of metal and wiring extending across her entire head. Her left eye was now mechanical, and glowed an ominous red. Her right eye remained organic. It was filled with hate and madness.

As Poe looked Phasma in the eyes, he felt it was her human half that had changed most. The machinery was cold and orderly, as Phasma had once been. But what he saw in her eyes was chaos. She had been brought back from the brink so many times, to be sent back to war, sent back to do the bidding of the First Order. It had taken its toll.

Rose snuck around behind Phasma, and gestured towards Poe. He reached down, and slid the Darksaber across the floor, through Phasma’s legs, towards Rose. He then slung the blaster off of his back, aimed it at Phasma’s head, and fired. A flurry of laser bolts crashed against her skull, and Phasma stumbled back.

Somehow, she righted herself, and glared at Poe with a renewed fury. The metal winding its way across her face was scored and black, but Phasma shrugged off the damage. Poe had never seen someone survive a single shot to the head, let alone several. He lowered his blaster in shock.

Rose had collected the sliding lightsaber. Phasma had now stumbled back into range, and was paying her no mind. Rose ignited the Darksaber as Phasma’s massive right leg landed next to her, bracing Phasma after she’d been hit. Rose raised the saber in the air, and swung down, the white, fizzing edge of the saber slicing through Phasma’s upper thigh as though it wasn’t there.

Phasma collapsed, onto the stump where her thigh was only moment before. She howled with frustration. She could barely move, but she still swung her saber back towards Rose, who barely evaded it by jumping back.

Now, Lando had a clear target. He lined Phasma up in the sights of the bowcaster, and pulled the trigger. The bolt hit Phasma directly in the chest again, this time sending cracks sprinting across her chrome breastplate.

Phasma continued to swing backwards towards Rose. Chewie shifted over behind Phasma, and grabbed Phasma’s arm during another errant swing. He braced every muscle in his body holding her in place.

Rose took the opportunity. Phasma, missing an arm and a leg, held in place by Chewie, with a cracked breastplate like an X marking the spot. She slipped past Chewie, and ducked under Phasma’s outstretched arm. Now in front of Phasma, she pulled the Darksaber back as far as she could, and plunged it through Phasma’s chest.

The blade burst out of Phasma’s back. For a moment, she continued to struggle. Then, her eye glazed over. She began to go limp. The Brightsaber dropped from her hand, and Chewie released her arm. Phasma’s lips moved, as though she was trying to say something, but no sound came out. She collapsed onto the bridge between the Resistance.

Rose took a deep breath. Lando began laughing. Poe stared down as Phasma, daring her to move again. The group reconvened in the middle of the bridge.

“That sure was something,” said Lando, a grin emblazoned on his face.

“If I’d known all it took to kill her was an angry Wookie and a few people with a lightsaber, I would’ve done it much sooner,” said Poe.

“We have to get out of here,” said Rose, looking at the engine as it grew increasingly volatile. Chewie concurred.

Behind them, they head the rasp of metal on metal. A lightsaber ignited. Phasma was dragging herself back to her feet, the Brightsaber activated in her fist. Poe smile flipped upside down. Rose removed the Darksaber from her belt again.

Chewie walked over to Phasma. She swung for his feet, but Chewie deftly leapt to one side. He grabbed her wrist and twisted, forcing her to drop the saber. It landed at his feet, and he kicked it backwards towards Rose.

Somehow, Phasma kept fighting. She was still absurdly strong. One-armed, she grabbed Chewie, and tossed backwards. He crashed down on the bridge and rolled to a stop, the heat of the engine now much stronger and much closer. The ends of his fur began to singe.

With Chewie behind her, nobody wanted to fire at Phasma. Rose began to move forward, but Chewie roared at her to stop. He had a plan. All Phasma needed to do was get a little closer.

And she did. Slowly, she moved towards him, dragging the stump of her leg along behind her. The hole in her chest had somehow not stopped her. Her breathing was more ragged, but the same menace still burned in her eyes.

She reached Chewie, and swung a fist at him. He caught it, and wrapped his other hand around her arm. With all his might, he lifted Phasma into the air and swung her body around him. The heat in the air was almost unbearable. Little embers burned all over Chewie.

But he kept swinging. When he’d turned 180 degree, he let her go. Phasma flew through the air, directly towards the open engine as it melted down. As she entered the inferno, the scowl never left her face. The hate never left her eyes. She hit the flame, and her body began to dissolve. Within seconds, Phasma had been turned into a cloud of black dust.

Chewie fell to one knee. The heat was unbearable. The entire engine hall was now bathed in an angry red. He roared. He begged the rest of the Resistance to leave.

But they didn’t. He felt hands on his shoulder and around his waist, pulling him back. Rose, Poe, and Lando dragged Chewie away from the engine, back across the bridge, and out into one of _The Supremacy’s_ many hallways.

“Did you guys bring the Falcon?” Rose asked. Chewie slowly got back to his feet, his fur now half-black from burning.

“We did,” said Lando.

“We can’t just leave her here. Let’s go,” said Rose. The group ran for the Falcon, as Phasma’s ashes churned in the inferno behind them.

\---

Rey raced towards him, her saber moving in a flurry. Kylo backed away, parrying each of Rey’s strikes. Her eyes were completely vacant as she spun, struck, ducked low, swept for his legs, and dodged back.

She was slower than usual. And her attack patterns were predictable. Kylo noticed that immediately. Whatever Hux’s droid did to her brain had numbed her abilities. A few times, Rey left herself open for a mortal wound. Kylo did not yet take the opportunity.

He realised that now was his best chance to kill her. This time, she did not have help. He was not wounded. She was vulnerable. With Rey gone, Hux would have nothing left. Kylo could knock away his ray shield, execute him and his team, and take the First Order back. Back to the way things were, with nobody to dispute him.

Kylo glanced up at Hux, who maintained his joyous leer at watching them fight. Hux deserved to die for what he had done. Kylo lusted after his position, after the things Hux had been able to accumulate. He had reunited the Knights of Ren, and invented some kind of mind control technology. Who knew what else Hux had in store, that Kylo Ren could use to take control of the galaxy and write his legacy in stone?

Rey swung for his head. Slow. Rote. Kylo ducked under it, and swung back at her to knock her saber out of the way. He’d wanted to kill her for so long. She had always reminded him of his weakness, and of his vulnerability. And yet… She had always believed he could be redeemed. No matter how many times he’d tried to kill her, no matter what he’d done, she had given him another chance.

Kylo knew he could not be redeemed. Anakin Skywalker was right. There was blood on Kylo’s hands that would never wash off. For the rest of his days, Kylo Ren would be a murderer. A monster.

But Anakin was also right about trying. As Rey continued her assault, Kylo realised that, for the first time in his life, he had to the chance to choose what mattered to him. There was no Luke Skywalker teaching him the old ways of the Jedi to hone his powers. No Snoke nudging him towards using those powers for Snoke’s own ends. No Hux to compete with for control. No Emperor whispering in his ear. There was just Rey, asking him to try and redeem himself. She was the only person who’d ever asked what he really wanted.

Rey had left herself open. Kylo Ren swung for her head.

The droid clattered to the stones below, sliced in half. Rey collapsed to one knee. Hux howled with anger. Kylo felt, for the first time in his life, that he had made a choice for himself. And it was the right one.

\---

Demi ran, and the droids ran after her. Crashing _The Vengeance_ had been great for the Resistance, but not so great for the odds of survival of anyone inside a First Order ship.

Demi knew where the escape pods were. As she ran, flames erupted around her. Alarm klaxons blared. Stormtroopers ran after her, not to engage in combat, but to try and reach the escape pods, to try and reach _anything_ that wasn’t on fire.

As she rounded a corner, Demi saw a trooper trapped under some rubble. They cried out for help, but their compatriots continued running past. Demi paused. The droids stopped near her.

She raced over to the trooper, grabbed the rubble, and began to pull it off of them. Pain raced through her shoulder where Tariss had shot her, but Demi continued to lift. The trooper pushed, and the rubble moved ever so slightly. Enough for the trooper to wiggle out. They scrambled away from the rubble, and back to their feet.

“Th… thank you…” said the trooper, breathlessly.

“Don’t mention it,” said Demi. The trooper turned, and ran. Demi followed.

The escape pods were nearly all gone. Artoo and BB-8 worked at one of the consoles, opening the doors for Threepio, D-O, and Demi. The droids all scrambled inside. Demi was the last to enter. As she ran down the hall, a mouse droid rolled around in panicked circles. She crouched down as she ran, scooped up the droid in one hand, and then dove into the escape pod. Threepio activated the pod. The door closed, and it ejected from _The Vengeance_.

The trip to Exogul’s surface was short. On the way down, Demi stared at the collapsing, erupting ships. The First Order was all she had known. All she had hated. And now, it was destroyed.

\---

Rey rose slowly back to her feet. She couldn’t remember the last fifteen minutes. On the ground beside her was a butchered droid. She had a pain in the side of her head. Around her lay the bodies of the Knights of Ren. But Rey yet lived. She rose, slowly, back to her feet.

Rey, with life back in her eyes, looked at Kylo. She couldn’t know exactly what had happened. But she knew she had been vulnerable, and that Kylo Ren had not taken the advantage.

“You could’ve killed me,” she said.

“I know,” said Kylo.

“Why didn’t you?”

Kylo paused. “This has to end.”

Hux was flummoxed. He had nothing left up his sleeve. The ray shield was all that stood between him and Kylo Ren. He fumbled for words, for something to say that could get him out of this.

And then the engineer pressed a button. The ray shield deactivated. Hux glared over at the engineer, shocked and betrayed. The engineer said nothing. He turned from the control panel, dropped to his knees, and put his hands behind his head.

“You _traitor_ ,” hissed Hux. “ _Scum! Coward! Fool! Malorden, execute him at once!”_

But Malorden had also fallen to his knees, his hands behind his head. They were surrendering. They were leaving Supreme Leader Hux to his fate.

Hux turned to look behind him, rage emblazoned on his face. The occultist looked at him blankly. He could see the green of their eyes, regarding him. Then, the occultist waved their hands. A cloud of green fog emerged around them.

The fog dissipated as quickly as it rose. As it dissolved, Hux realised the occultist had disappeared with it. He was alone.

Kylo Ren and Rey made their way up the stairs towards Hux. He stumbled backwards, falling down as he did.

“Don’t be a coward, Kylo. You can still kill the girl! You can still live up to your potential! Do not let her weakness distract you from our mission!” said Hux.

Kylo advanced towards him, but paused as he began to speak. Kylo said nothing. Rey watched them both from the top of the stairs. This was Kylo’s decision, now. The Force moved differently around him. It did not roil and twist, as though Kylo was the eye of a terrible storm. Now, it flowed more smoothly. Kylo had made a choice to attempt redemption, and he had begun to find peace in doing so.

Hux continued to scramble back. “No, no, please, no, Kylo, please. You can have the First Order back! I’ll do whatever you say, whatever you want.” Hux hit the back wall of the room, and curled up against it. “Please, Supreme Leader Ren, please don’t kill me.”

Kylo sighed. He held his saber limply in his hand.

“Luke Skywalker told me it was not the Jedi way to kill,” said Kylo, looking at Rey. She shrugged.

“The Jedi are gone. You can’t make this choice based on some ancient texts,” Rey responded. “He deserves everything that’s coming to him.”

“Would you kill him?”

“I don’t think so. But I don’t share your history. I can’t make this choice for you.”

As they spoke, Hux reached for his boot. He pulled a small blaster out of a hidden pocket. With Kylo’s head turned, Hux raised the blaster, and fired for his chest. Hux smiled as he fired, finally victorious.

Kylo sensed it immediately. He raised his hand, and caught the blaster bolt in mid-air. Hux’s face twisted again, from a victorious grin to a terrified frown.

Kylo looked at Hux, as he curled in fear against the back wall of the ancient Sith temple. Hux would never be redeemed. Until his final breath, he would scheme, and lie, and manipulate. Much like Snoke, and the Emperor, Hux craved power more than anything else. He could not conceive of a world he was not in control of.

Kylo Ren launched the blaster bolt back into Hux’s chest. It crashed against his ribs. Hux gasped. His head lolled to the side. His body went limp. In his last moment, anger never left his eyes.

\---

The trip back to the Falcon was fraught with collapsed corridors and pillars of flame. Eventually, they made it back to the ship bay. The nose of _The Vengeance_ had crashed directly through, and the oxygen in the area was only being contained by a few volatile, emergency ray shields.

 _The Supremacy_ had tilted, and the Falcon was sliding slowly towards one of the exit ports: one that was now looking straight down towards the planet’s surface. Rose, Poe, Lando, and Chewie all scrambled up the ramp, and dove into the cockpit. They frantically pressed buttons and pulled levers. Uneasily, the Falcon rose into the air.

“Come on, Chewie!” said Lando. Chewie roared, spun the Falcon around, and gunned it out of the ship bay. They headed down to Exogul’s surface, a safe distance from the Sith temple.

As they exited the ship, they saw an escape pod nearby. Demi and the droids headed their way, smiling. Rose ran over to Demi, and wrapped her in a massive hug. From the temple, Rey ran towards them.

Kylo had slipped off after Hux had been defeated. Rey could still sense him, as he leapt into Hux’s ship that was hidden on the other side of the Sith temple. His energy grew fainter as he flew into the air and headed for hyperspace. She did not know what his plans were. Kylo didn’t either. He just knew he had to get away.

The air battle above was over. First Order TIE Fighters turned tail and flew out of Exogul’s atmosphere, heading for hyperspace. Poe radioed the Resistance, and told them not to follow. There had been enough fighting for one day. The remaining members of the First Order could be chased tomorrow.

The Resistance stood close together, next to the Falcon. They watched as the First Order star destroyers crashed down on the Sith temple in a storm of fire. As they crashed, _The Supremacy’s_ wounded engine finally went critical. It burst into an explosion that shook the ground around them. The other star destroyers melted in the heat. The Sith temple burst into jagged shards of obsidian.

They watched until the flames began to die down to embers. The First Order was gone. Defeated. The strange, corrupted air of Exogul was filled with bold, new hope. Joyously, the Resistance returned to their ships, and headed back to Kashyyk.


	21. Chapter 21

Lights of every colour shone in the tree city on Kashyyk. The Resistance had won, and now they celebrated. The Resistance danced in a massive hall, with music played on Mandalorian flutes not heard for many years and large Wookie harps. Lando, Chewie, and Demi put down shots of a warm, golden alcohol. It was a competition. Chewie had the size advantage, but Lando outweighed him by far in experience. Demi had neither, and was nearly under the table.

Good news had flown in from around the galaxy. On Yavin IV, the compliance droids had stopped working after the destruction of the First Order fleet. First Order outposts were disorganised, and being overrun by local freedom fighters. Many members of the Resistance had heard from family members for the first time in years. Elation hummed throughout Kashyyk as though the universe itself was happy the First Order was gone.

Outside the city, below and behind, Rey stood in the Wookie graveyard. She stood by Finn’s grave, the little tree growing over the mound of dirt where he was now buried. Beside him was another mound, and another little tree. The Wookie elders had made sure that Finn was buried next to Maz, to ensure they had each other in whatever afterlife they found.

Rey stood in silence. She listened to her heartbeat. It was still missing something. The Resistance had won, but it did not make up for all she had lost. The violence of the First Order had cut through systems, mutilating cities and wounding whole planets. It would take a long time to rebuild. But the scars would be felt even longer in the chests of those who had lost someone, of those who had lost whole families to death and dispossession.

Rey sensed Poe walking up behind her. He made little noise, but Rey could feel the sadness within him. He stood beside her, next to Finn’s grave.

“I’m gonna miss him,” said Poe. Rey said nothing. Poe took her hand, and sighed. The sounds of the celebration echoed down from the treetops above.

“I can’t believe you worked with Kylo Ren,” Poe added. “Not that I think it was the wrong choice. I just don’t know how you saw past what he’d done.”

“I don’t know either,” said Rey. “But I had to. We had to. Kylo Ren saw it too. We had to do whatever we could to stop the First Order.”

“And now, they’re stopped. They won’t hurt anybody else.”

“They will. They’re not all gone, not yet. Even when they are, it’s not enough for them to not cause more damage. The galaxy needs to heal.”

Poe nodded, and paused for a moment. He looked at the little sapling on Finn’s grave. It time, it would grow back, into another tree, and the Wookie elders would add Finn’s name to it. They would make sure he wasn’t forgotten.

“I’m going back to Yavin IV, to clean up whatever Hux and his droids were working on. Then, I’m going to try and fix what the First Order broke. Wherever they’ve been in the galaxy, I’ll go, and see if I can help,” said Poe. He’d known he wouldn’t be able to stop when the First Order was defeated. There was still so much work to be done.

“A good plan.”

“It won’t be easy. I could use a Jedi.”

Rey had no future plans, not consciously. But she knew she couldn’t go with Poe. Since the First Order fell, she felt a pull within the Force. Something kept tugging at her soul.

“I can’t help you, Poe. I have to… Well, I’m not sure what I have to do. But there’s something out there that’s calling my name.”

“I figured. You seemed ready to move on.” Poe hadn’t expected Rey to come with him. But he had to ask anyway. He figured he’d take whoever was left in the Resistance who didn’t have a home to go back to, and he’d build from there.

Poe continued. “Are you going to restore the Jedi? Balance out the Force and all that?”

Rey chuckled. “No. Not the Jedi. But there will still be people attuned to the Force who won’t know what to do with their powers. I think I’ll find a place for them, and teach them what I can. Eventually.”

Poe squeezed Rey’s hand, and then removed a flask from his belt. He’d brought a pair of cups down with him, and he poured a golden liquid from the flask into each cup. He handed one of the cups to Rey.

“To Finn. The best person I’ve ever met to steal and then crash a TIE Fighter with. The galaxy won’t be the same without him,” said Poe.

“To Finn. I love you, and I always will,” said Rey. Tears glimmered in their eyes. They tapped their glasses together, and finished the drink.

Poe returned to the party. Rey stayed by Finn for a time, but as the sounds wound down in the trees above, she too left. She left the little saplings that grew over the final resting places of Maz Kanata and Finn. Stars sparkled high above in the Kashyyk sky, above the graves of two of the galaxy’s greatest heroes.

\---

Rose and Celly had absconded from the party, back down through the little warehouse, out to where Celly had handed Rose the Darksaber. Celly had opened the case, and Rose held the Darksaber in her hand.

“Can you believe we won?” asked Celly.

“I can. We had to. The pattern had to break eventually. We had to break it,” said Rose. Celly laughed.

“I wish I had that confidence. I was terrified the whole time!”

“You didn’t show it.”

“Yeah. That’s why I wear the mask.”

The conversation paused. Rose placed the Darksaber back into the indentation within the case. Rose felt as though the galaxy had shifted. As though the air around her was calmer. As they’d watched the First Order fleet crash into the Sith temple, she’d felt it. Not the thrill of victory, or the elation that their mission had been completed. It was as though a great wrong, some cosmic imbalance spanning generations and reaching across planets, had been righted.

“We’ve never lived in a galaxy without an Empire, or without a First Order,” said Rose.

“Even before, the Republic, and the Jedi, controlled everything,” said Celly. “The Jedi and the Sith have just taken turns between burning up the galaxy and crushing it underfoot.”

“And if you managed to avoid them, you had the crime gangs to deal with. The slavers in the Outer Rim. The wealthy on Coruscant and Canto Bight. Emperors of different sizes in every system.”

“What comes next?”

Rose furrowed her brow. She’d been spending her time destroying the First Order. She didn’t have much of a background in politics, especially not for a whole galaxy.

“I don’t know. People won’t be beholden to armies led by puppet politicians, with Sith or Jedi pulling the strings. It’ll be something new. And then something will come to fill the vacuum where empires once stood, and we’ll stop them too.”

“I meant for you, Rose.” Rose paused. She hadn’t thought about the future after the First Order. It had consumed her since Paige died. Before then, really. The First Order had defined her life, and now they were gone.

“It’s not over. The First Order weren’t the only problem in the galaxy. I can think of a few places that still need my help.”

“You gonna fight forever, then?”

“As long as there’s evil that needs fighting. Sure. What about you, Celly?”

“I’m going home. Not to Yavin IV. Mandalore. The Empire is gone, and the First Order isn’t hunting us. We have no idea what is left of our culture, if there’s any Mandalorians left over. We have to know. We’re all going home.”

The Darksaber rested within its case between them. Rose still lay her hand on the cold metal. At her belt hung Phasma’s Brightsaber instead.

“I think that’s what we’ll all do. Put the pieces back together, across the galaxy.”

“With you around, Rose, I reckon the galaxy might just be alright.”

Rose smiled. She removed her hand from the Darksaber. Celly and Rose each placed a hand on the lid of the case, and pressed it down shut.

\---

On Yavin IV, Poe Dameron wraps his arms around his parents, BB-8 trilling at his side. A once-bustling shipyard is dismantled, the skeleton of a First Order star destroyer stripped away almost as fast as it was built.

On Mandalore, ships touch down within the broken husk of an old, domed city. The city was destroyed by the Empire, and the Mandalorians banished into the stars. But now, with the Mandalorian wars finished, and the Empire gone, the planet has had time to revive itself. Outside of the dome, plant life grows for the first time in centuries. Celly walks out into the ruins. She runs her hand through a fern that is growing through the cracks of an ancient paved street. The dead world is coming back to life.

Blasters flare through the streets on Canto Bight. Rose leads the Resistance, and the Canto Bight security force can’t help but fall back. Above her, a TIE Fighter emblazoned with colour demolishes starfighters aligned with the wealthy and powerful. Eventually, the city grows silent. The arms dealers that haunted the casino now kneel on the street in cuffs. The slaves that run Canto Bight from the tunnels below now rise to the surface. Free.

On Kashyyk, Lando Calrissian lounges in a chair. Soft, blue waves gently come and go on the beach. He sips a pink beverage through a bendy straw. Next to him, Chewie does the same. He hasn’t worked out how to keep the sand out of his fur. But the drink is cold, and the warm sun slowly put him to sleep. C3PO rests his hand on R2D2’s head. They all look out, past the beach, past the waves, at the orange glow of sunset. There is nothing more for them to resist, no more enemies to rebel against. Just peace, throughout the galaxy.


	22. Chapter 22

“Kid’s got something going on, but I don’t know what to do with her. I can’t teach her. Take her to old Ben Solo, out in the Dune Sea. He’s a little strange, but he’s the only shot you have.”

The Tusken mother takes her child by the hand. She nods to the man who runs the local school in Mos Espa. Tusken children had only recently been allowed to learn in Mos Espa schools. Since the fall of the First Order, a lot of things had changed. The old cruelties sown into the fabric of the galaxy were beginning to be unwound.

The child A’tapa had been disruptive in class, lifting objects with her mind, always convincing the other students to give her their sweets with a wave of her hand. Her mother, Tapa-ur, had only heard of these powers in stories, and had a hard time believing they were true of her daughter. Especially because those stories rarely had happy endings.

But Tapa-ur was canny. She was determined to make sure her daughter could put how powers to good use, no matter how bad the omens.

The mother gets back on her speeder-bike, and heads out into the desert, with her daughter sitting behind her. As far as she knew, old Ben Solo was a myth. A figure from ancient history, who supposedly haunted the Dune Sea. But the teacher had given clear directions. An hour later, a cluster of small, domed buildings appeared on the horizon. Tapa-ur stopped her speeder bike out front.

She took A’tapa by the hand, and walked down into the trench between the buildings. Most moisture farms were constructed this way, with a wall of buildings surrounding an internal valley that protected against the heat.

“Hello?” A’tapa called. It had been commonly assumed that the Tusken could not speak Galactic Basic. This had been true, only in the sense that few Tusken had ever had the chance to learn before being chased out of cities and schools. A’tapa had picked up Basic very quickly in her first year of school.

The moisture farm itself was sparsely decorated. Along one wall were a number of tattered flags, from regions of the galaxy A’tapa had read about in stories. She entered one of the small, sheltered rooms. Inside was a fridge. Inside the fridge were several containers of blue milk. A’tapa’s favourite. She took one out, and began to drink. With her other hand, she played with the container lid, lifting it up and down with her mind.

Tapa-ur moved to admonish A’tapa for her bad manners when she heard someone move behind her. She reached for her blaster, and spun on her heel.

Behind her stood a man with grey streaks in his black hair. His face was covered with little rivers of scars, but behind his eyes Tapa-ur saw friendliness. The man wore a loose black shirt and pants, and donned a thin, brown robe over the top.

“No need for that,” said the man, gesturing towards Tapa-ur’s blaster. Maybe she was overzealous in protecting her daughter, but she’d rather be overzealous than wrong.

“I am Ben Solo,” he continued. “I assume you’re here about the little one?”

A’tapa had not stopped hovering the container lid. Tapa-ur had tried to stop her from doing it in public, to no avail. People were still frightened of these powers, even though the ones who had wielded them against Tatooine had been gone for many years.

Tapa-ur nodded to Ben Solo. Ben walked over to A’tapa, and crouched down in front of her. A’tapa appraised him as she practiced her skills. He seemed fine enough. Hadn’t told her off for using dark magic like some of the teachers at her old school.

“What’s your name?” asked Ben.

“A’tapa.”

“I am Ben Solo. You seem quite talented.” A’tapa noticed that Ben Solo wasn’t a natural conversationalist. He was definitely trying hard enough, but this kind of chatter didn’t come naturally to him.

“I am quite talented,” she said, taking another sip of her illicit blue milk. Ben Solo smiled, and turned back to Tapa-ur.

“I’m sure you were told I could teach her, but I cannot. I can direct her to a teacher, however. She’s very good, and will look after your daughter, but she would have to travel off-world.”

Tapa-ur had known this was possible. All of the old stories involved temples on distant planets, planets that boggled the mind. Entire worlds of green shrubs and giant trees? A city that covered an entire planet? Absurd. But so went the stories.

Tapa-ur had already accepted that A’tapa would be leaving. But the concept was still near-unbearably painful. She nodded. Ben Solo smiled again. It was a sad smile, Tapa-ur noted.

“Take this pass to Mos Eisley. Use it to get on a transport, and you’ll find what you’re looking for,” said Ben, handing Tapa-ur a small card. She nodded, and offered him credits in recompense, but Ben shook his head.

They returned to the speeder bike. A’tapa now carried a sack filled with canisters of blue milk. Ben Solo had insisted, and Tapa-ur wasn’t going to win that argument with her daughter. Ben Solo stood at the entry to his home, his hands hidden in the sleeves of his robes. Tapa-ur found him strange, even for a human. But not unkind. There was some kind of pain deep within him, some kind of struggle unresolved.

But A’tapa had sensed a peace within him as well. It was a peace hard won. It was why she had trusted him, and agreed to travel off-world on such short notice, even as it pained her mother.

Tapa-ur kicked the speeder bike into action, and they made their way to Mos Eisley.

\---

A few days later, Tapa-ur and A’tapa touched down on Takodana. The passes Ben Solo had offered them were all-inclusive. They would get A’tapa to her new teacher, and they would get Tapa-ur home. Tapa-ur would need to organise some kind of gift for Ben Solo. He wouldn’t accept credits, but maybe she could leave a womp rat stew at his door.

As they descended down the transport’s ramp, they were in shock. They didn’t know there was this much green in the whole galaxy. A’tapa had heard of planets like these, and had seen them in books at school, but actually stepping out onto it was a whole other thing.

Tapa-ur was overwhelmed, but had to maintain her stoicism around her daughter. As they walked towards a large castle on the horizon, she decided she wasn’t much a fan of green. She preferred yellow. Maybe an orange or a brown. Nothing wrong with a nice, rolling Tatooine desert.

A’tapa could tell her mother was both overwhelmed, and homesick. She couldn’t reveal that she knew. Her mother’s stoicism must be maintained.

The castle itself was ancient, with sections that had been recently restored. They entered into a central courtyard, over which hung hundreds of flags, some of which A’tapa recognised from Ben Solo’s house.

Children and teenagers ran all over the courtyard, with a few adults watching over them. Some were organised into groups, and were training, lifting boulders that were three times as big as anything A’tapa had ever lifted with her mind. Some were seated around a holoprojector, which laid out a map of the galaxy onto the maroon brick floor. A teacher walked around them, pointing to different planets and asking the students questions.

A woman walked up to them from the main door of the castle. She wore a tan shirt with a white tie wrapped around her torso. Her hair was tied up into three buns, running from the top of her head down the back. She held a staff in her left hand, and her right arm was entirely mechanical. A droid rolled towards them, a little wheel with a conical head on top, weaving its way between the woman’s feet. The woman grinned at Tapa-ur and A’tapa. A’tapa immediately decided that she liked her new teacher.

“I’m Rey,” said the woman. She reached out her hand to A’tapa, who took it. Rey nodded to Tapa-ur, who maintained her stoicism.

“I’m A’tapa, and this is my mum, Tapa-ur.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you both. You must be hungry. Do either of you like womp rat stew?”

Tapa-ur nodded. Rey smiled again, and led them inside the castle.

Takodana bustled with life, and the Force was strong within it.

\---

Rey sat at the top of the castle, watching the sunset. D-O rested at her feet. The whole of the forest around her was cast in a soothing, orange glow. Below, she could hear the sounds of dinner: children shouting, adults talking, the clank and clatter of bowls and plates. Rey watched the sunset, and waited.

Soon, she felt a presence beside her. Her heart beat twice. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a blue mist coalescing into a figure. Instinctively, she tilted her head, and rested it on his shoulder.

“You know I can show up whenever, right? It doesn’t have to be at sunset.”

“I know. But this is nice. And the students will think I’m strange if they see me talking to a ghost.”

Finn laughed. “They already think you’re strange.”

Rey pulled her head off of his shoulder, and turned to him in mock-shock.

“How would you know?”

“They told me. They like me more than you, you know.”

Rey huffed. “You get the easy job. You just get to be a friendly ghost. _I’m_ the one who has to teach them.”

Finn laughed again. When Rey had left Kashyyk, she had been drawn back to Takodana. Drawn back to Maz’s castle. It was in ruins, and nobody had been there for some time. She’d wandered through, through the trees and through the courtyard, and into the main hall. Finn had been sitting at one of the tables, his blue aura lighting the whole room. Waiting for her.

Finn said that he’d first reformed when he sensed she’d needed her on Exogul. Then, he heard Maz’s voice about a day later. She told him to go to her old castle, and wait. So he did.

He found it hard to reform himself from the Force the first time, but around Rey, he could do it on call. Rey knew exactly when he was about to show up. Her second heart would start beating again, and the whole world felt like it was righting itself again.

They spent most of their evenings up here on the roof of Maz’s castle, talking and laughing into the early hours of the morning.

Rey placed her head back on Finn’s shoulder. He still felt warm, still alive. He wrapped his spectral arm around her shoulder. Together, they watched the sun set on Takodana, wrapped in each other’s arms, their hearts beating as one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the first story i've ever finished, so i'm pretty proud of myself honestly!
> 
> thank you for reading it :)


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